


The Order of Things

by AnNee



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: M/M, Supernatural and J2 Big Bang Challenge 2011
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-18
Updated: 2014-02-18
Packaged: 2018-01-12 23:07:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 48,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1203919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnNee/pseuds/AnNee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the cusp of what could potentially be the most defining summer of his young life, budding artist Jared Padalecki has just made a decision that could send his carefully constructed world into tailspin.<br/>Five years after running away, he’s going back home. Back to Rhylee, Texas – back to everything and everyone he’s been steadfastly avoiding for the last half a decade. Except now, with his first solo art exhibit fast approaching, a newfound case of painter's block, and reminders of his past around every corner - Jared's beginning to realise that maybe, it isn’t Rhylee that he’s been avoiding all these years.  Maybe it's the secrets he left there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Order of Things

  


Jared hates Tuesdays.  
  
There’s something so mundane about them, just loitering there, not midweek, not the weekend—not even Thursday, by which point you’ve jumped the midweek hurdle and can fully prepare yourself for Friday, which is Jared’s favourite day because then it’s the weekend, which _everyone_ loves.  
  
But Tuesdays? Useless, as far as Jared’s concerned.  
  
Usually, they can pass by unnoticed, apart from a few curse words and the occasional hissy fit. Every siren that passes by, every spilt drink, every rude shove from a stranger on the sidewalk can be followed by a shrug and a mumbled “ _fucking figures_ ” when it happens to occur on a Tuesday in Jared’s world.  
  
Of course, lots of these things happen on any of the other six days of the week too, but Jared doesn’t have the energy to muster up an unreasonable, burning hatred for every day.  
  
That would just be stupid.  
  
The perpetual Tuesday storm cloud doesn’t even bog Jared down too much. Usually, he can escape the stupid day with a missed alarm, or a dead battery, or a paper cut. Other times, of course, months of stress-free Tuesdays unite and conspire, in true Tuesday fashion, to royally fuck Jared up the ass.  
  
Like this Tuesday, for instance.  
  
“You know the showing is in less than a month, right?”  
  
Jared sighs and tips his soiled brushes into the sink harder than is probably necessary. “Yeah—I know.”  
  
Sophia’s voice drifts from the speaker phone in the living room to where Jared is attempting to clean supplies in the kitchen. “And I should have given Marianne a rough estimate of finished pieces, like, three days ago.”  
  
Jared grits his teeth and flicks the faucet on. “Yeah Soph, I know.”  
  
The sink starts to fill with murky, vile-coloured water as greens and blues run off the brushes and mix with the soap. _If Tuesday had a fucking color._  
  
“ _O_ -kay,” she sing-songs lightheartedly; she pauses for a second and the cackle of static fills the studio apartment. “And you know it’s my ass on the line with this commission, right? Because…”  
  
“Sophia!” Jared snaps, his patience wearing on a razor’s edge as he slams the faucet off and turns to lean back against the counter.  
  
“Okay, okay,” she relents, sighing heavily, and Jared can hear the humdrum of the gallery behind her. “But it’s my job to make sure you know, y’know.”  
  
Jared smirks and jams a hand through his ruffled hair as he turns back to the sink. “Yeah. _I know_.”  
  
Sophia chuckles as the apartment door bangs open and Chad breezes in, shucking his jacket and bag on the nearest sofa and casually nodding at Jared. “Yo.”  
  
“Hey.” Jared frowns as Chad beelines for the fridge and pulls out a beer.  
  
“Hey baby!” Sophia’s tinny voice chirrups and Chad looks around, confused for a second before he grins towards the phone.  
  
“Hey gorgeous,” he purrs, capping the bottle and moving closer to the speaker as Jared rolls his eyes and sinks his hands into the soapy water.  
  
Chad and Sophia’s hasn’t exactly been a conventional relationship, Jared supposes, in terms of modern day attitudes and common sense logic. An agreement in which either party can have anonymous sex at any given moment so long as the contributing party is a, a one-night stand; b, free of crazy; and c, open to threesomes is barely even an _arrangement_ , in Jared’s opinion, let alone a relationship, but he’s been told in the past that he’s somewhat of a traditionalist and it seems to have worked perfectly fine for them for neigh on two years.  
  
A completely monogamous relationship with Chad is enough to baffle Jared’s mind all by itself and he loves the guy like a brother, so he can kind of see where the girl was coming from when she agreed to it.  
  
It isn’t that Jared is completely heartless. Quite the contrary; there have been times in the not-so-distant past when he could have been described as a downright starry-eyed romantic. And he doesn’t know if it’s just the common sense that comes with age or something else—something deep-seated and disturbing—that has gradually changed his outlook from general pessimism to outright cynicism, but he often finds himself hating it.  
  
He is, however, still fully committed to the belief that Chad and Sophia are kidding themselves; the former of whom is currently making himself at home on Jared’s couch cushions, a beer pressed loosely against his thigh, as they wrap up plans to meet up after Sophia gets off work.  
  
“Remember my ass, Jared!” she calls out before hanging up, and Chad turns to glare daggers at Jared.  
  
“What the hell’re you doing remembering my girlfriend’s ass, dude!” he cries, squinty eyes narrowing even further as Jared rolls his own less-squinty ones and wipes his soapy, paint-stained hands on his jeans.  
  
“I thought we had an understanding? I accept the fact you suck dick and you keep your panties-dropping puppy eyes away from my girls!”  
  
Jared leans against the counter again, arms folded, and raises an eyebrow. “That’s the fifth call today,” he tells Chad pointedly, gesturing helplessly to the cordless phone beside him. “Five fucking calls for estimates and numbers and progress reports!”  
  
Chad raises an eyebrow right back. “Yeah?” He lazily lifts the beer to his lips. “And what’d you tell them?”  
  
Jared frowns, chewing absently on a thumbnail that tastes like oil paint. “I told them they had nothing to worry about,” he mumbles.  
  
Chad hums and glances around at the twelve empty canvases and paint-splattered clothes covering half the apartment floor. “So you lied.”  
  
Jared drops his head back. “Yeah. Kinda.”  
  
The phone suddenly shrills and Jared jumps, his thumb falling away from his teeth as he stares accusingly at the machine and then at Chad, who shrugs uselessly.  
  
“Might as well make it six,” Chad says, tipping his head back against the couch cushions to grin at him.  
  
Jared sighs and clenches his fingers into a fist before reaching out and grabbing the phone.  
  
“Yeah?” Jared answers with a wince, fully prepared to be bombarded by twenty questions from Marianne herself when instead he’s greeted by a voice he left 2,000 miles and five years ago.  
  
“Jared?”  
  
Or at least a voice he _thought_ he’d left 2,000 miles and five years ago. The voice that’s currently snapping him out of his sudden panic attack sounds a lot like it’s been calling up to chat like this every day for the past decade.  
  
A huff blows down the line and then, “Jared, I know you’re there so stop being a friggin’ dork and answer.”  
  
Jared takes a breath and tries to steady his voice as it lodges in his throat. “S… _Sandy_?”  
  
Chad’s eyes double in size where he’s watching the conversation and he scrambles to lean over the back of the couch.  
  
 _Sandy_? he mouths, bewildered, still gaping like a fish and flaying out his hand that isn’t clutching beer to gesture at the phone.  
  
“Yeah, it’s me,” Sandy chirps, letting out a laugh that borders on nervousness. “Surprised?”  
  
A glimpse of her nervously twisting her long hair around her finger springs unbidden into Jared’s mind and he shakes himself out of a daze.  
  
“Uh…yeah.” He clears the croak from his throat and sags against the wall.  
  
Chad springs from the back of the couch and takes three bounds towards him, trying to move his head close enough to Jared’s to hear Sandy for himself.  
  
“Yeah, I guess I am. Kinda.” Jared swats Chad’s head away with a scowl. “What… I mean…?”  
  
Another nervous giggle pierces his ear. “What? An old friend can’t just call to check in anymore? Is that how it is, Padalecki?”  
  
“Oh, no, an old friend can check in, sure,” Jared is quick to reply, an unfamiliar tickle of unease in his gut making his hand tremble. “Why are _you_ calling?”  
  
Sandy’s silent and Jared pointedly ignores the stern scowl Chad is busy directing at the side of face, focusing all his attention on keeping the handset steady between them.  
  
“Look, Jared.” All pretence is gone now—no nervous giggles, no soft undertones. Just Sandy. Steady, sure—certain as she’s ever been.  
  
The tickle turns into a burn.  
  
“I know I’m not too high on your Christmas card list right now, but if you could be civil and hear me out for five goddamn minutes, that would be really great!”  
  
Jared slumps, his eyes dropping to trace the movement of his fingers as they tug and twirl the phone cord, and says nothing.  
  
Sandy exhales audibly. “Wonderful.” There’s a distinct pause and then, “I want you to come home.”  
  
It takes about thirty seconds for her words to register and prompt a short bark of laughter.  
  
“Excuse me.”  
  
“I want you to come home. Danni’s really counting on you to be here.”  
  
Jared pulls the phone away from his ear and looks at it stupidly, then at Chad, who’s looking at him with a similar expression.  
  
“What the hell are you talking about?” Jared says finally.  
  
“Jared…”  
  
Jared fucking loses it. The shock ebbs enough that his thin grip on restraint and rationality snaps and words come bleeding out of his mouth before he can stop them. “No, don’t _Jared_ me. Don’t you fucking dare _Jared_ me! You call my fucking apartment for the first time in four fucking years and tell me to pack up my shit and move because you want me to? Is this some kind of a joke?”  
  
“It’s not a joke,” Sandy replies immediately, insistently. “Jared, it’s not. I just…”  
  
“How did you even get this number?”  
  
Sandy pauses, evidently taking a moment to decide the best way to answer. “Chad gave it to me last time he was in town.”  
  
Jared glares pointedly at Chad, who is suddenly enthralled by the marble grain of the counter top. _Fucking traitor_.  
  
“Oh yeah? And what is so fucking pressing after five years that I have to drop my life and come home?”  
  
“Danni’s getting married, Jared. Danni. And I know you got the invite, and I know you have absolutely no intention of replying to it.”  
  
Jared continues to glare at Chad, who holds his hands up in a “ _don’t shoot the messenger_ ” gesture.  
  
“Yeah,” Jared snaps in lieu of a real response, his eyes flicking involuntarily to the microwave across the kitchenette that the tiny, inconspicuous envelope has been resting on top of for a week now. He couldn’t throw it away. But he can’t read it a second time either. “ _So_?”  
  
“So—five years is long enough.” Sandy’s voice turns resolute again. “And I’m done pretending this is okay. _Done_ , do you hear me?”  
  
Jared looks at Chad as his friend gives him a sad little smirk. Jared narrows his eyes.  
  
“Your friends want you back here. Your _family_ wants you back here,” Sandy continues, persistently, but there’s something to her tone that chews at Jared’s insides—something distant and sad. Something, he tells himself, that sure isn’t his problem anymore. “And you can sure as hell swallow your pride for the two weeks it’ll take to come home and watch one of your oldest friends get married.”  
  
Jared snorts at that, even while something unnamed is tightening in his stomach. “I doubt she’ll notice, Sandy.”  
  
She falls quiet for a second. “She’ll notice.”  
  
Jared sighs at her tone, something long forgotten and dusty making his resolve crack and sway. Sandy has that effect on everyone; mostly—always—on Jared. He doesn’t know why the hell he thought that would have changed at all.  
  
“Sandy, I can’t. I have a showing…”  
  
“Yeah, I know. In Dallas, right? _Perfect_ coincidence, don’t you think?”  
  
Jared cuts another accusing glare over at Chad, who shrugs guiltily and widens his eyes even further. “She talks to my mama, man. I can’t lie to my mama!”  
  
Jared rolls his eyes and listens to Sandy giggle. “Jared, don’t blame Chad,” she scolds, perking up to yell: “Hi, Chad!”  
  
“Hi Sandy,” Chad mumbles back diffidently, hopping down off the counter and wandering over to rest shamefacedly against the couch.  
  
Jared huffs out a breath and shoves a hand roughly through his hair. “Sandy, no. It’s a twelve-piece commission project, I haven’t even started half of them, I’m waiting on a call from the…”  
  
“Jared, I know you haven’t been home in a while, but you’ll be shocked to find we still have all kinds of fancy equipment here.” Jared’s eyes narrow at the teasing lilt in Sandy’s voice. “Telephones, art stores, _running water_ …”  
  
“Me and Sophia are heading down this weekend, Jay,” Chad prompts, idly flicking a lamp on and off in a way that’s rubbing against Jared’s already grated nerves. “Tag along. Kill some time before the opening.”  
  
Jared swipes an apple from the bowl beside his elbow and aims it quick and hard at Chad’s face. “I’mma sure as hell kill _something_ , you fucking Judas!”  
  
Chad dodges the apple that flies past his shoulder into the coffee table behind him and snatches his hand away from the light. “I was just being reasonable!”  
  
“Great. Well, problem solved, Sandy.” Jared straightens up as Chad glowers at him and leans backwards to pick up the abused fruit. “Chad and his plus one are more than willing to kill time over there with you and the wedding party for a while, so…happy summering, I guess.”  
  
Sandy sighs heavily as Chad straightens up, apple in hand, and rolls his eyes.  
  
“Jared, come on.” She’s losing her patience, Jared can tell.  
  
Once, when they were fifteen, Sandy lost a game of air hockey and threw the mallet at Jared’s head. She missed—quite spectacularly, in fact—and blamed the entire debacle on PMS and an intense slushy sugar high, but she felt pretty bad about the whole thing. It lived on way after the fact as what was only ever referred to as “the event” and the sole reason Sandy wasn’t allowed to play games involving potential weaponry without a chaperon anymore.  
  
“I know you’re super busy and everything with your very important life that has nothing to do with any of us, but come _on_ , don’t you think it’s been long enough? It’s going to be our last summer together, Jared! Our last chance, and…”  
  
She huffs out a breath, and when she comes back, she’s using a different tone. No pre-mallet impatience, no teasing giggles—just Sandy. The Sandy Jared knew pretty damn well once upon a time. The Sandy who can still shake every one of his resolves. Even 2,000 miles away. Even five years later.  
  
“I’ve never called you for anything,” she says finally. “I’ve never asked you for anything, not in five years—but I’m asking you for this. _Please_ , Jared.” And Jared’s resolve wilts, just like that. “Please just consider it.”  
  
Jared hangs up with a sigh, all his adrenaline and pent-up anger settling heavy in his stomach like bile. He stares at the plastic receiver for awhile before lifting his eyes to find Chad staring at him, tight-lipped, still behind the couch.  
  
“You’re going, aren’t you?” he says knowingly, and Jared sighs and lets his head fall back to stare despondently at the cracked ceiling.  
  
Turns out, the decision that changes Jared’s whole world is made on a Tuesday.  
  
He’s never been a fan of irony. 

  


::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::  


  


_“See over there.”  
  
His mother is pointing at something, way off in the distance, and Jared looks up from where he’s organising his Skittles in neat rows on the picnic table. Primary colours from secondary, and then side by side to create complementary. They’re learning all about colour wheels at school and Miss Kimberley says that he’s pretty good at it—best in his class, even. “He’s a natural, Mrs. Padalecki,” she said. That made his mom smile.  
  
Jared squints against the sunshine, follows his mother’s finger out over the hill to where the whole of Rhylee is laid out for miles and miles. He sees Lexington, where the big houses are, but he still doesn’t see what’s got her so excited.  
  
“Where?”  
  
His mother shifts lower so their heads are close together. They’re sitting side by side, pressed tight together; their usual bench, their usual hill. They usually bring papers and pencils and stay out till the sun starts to set and it’s time for dinner. Tonight, she has to work at the bar, so she only brought him Skittles and a jacket for the walk back to Laurie’s house. She points her finger again and her soft hair tickles Jared’s nose. She smells like turpentine and vanilla.  
  
“That big grey building, way down there—with that big green field beside it.”  
  
Jared finds it, nods, pops a grape candy into his mouth. Blue and red make purple. Purple complements yellow. See? A natural.  
  
“Oh. Yeah, I see it.” He gives his mother a dubious sideways glance. “So?”  
  
His mother smiles. “That’s Charlton Academy.”  
  
“A school?” Jared likes school. His teachers tell him he’s pretty smart, but his mom says that there’s always more to learn, no matter how much you think you know. Besides, second grade is still pretty young. No one knows everything in second grade.  
  
“The best school.” Her voice is steady in his ear, soft and familiar, but there’s something distant about it. Something determined and giddy that catches Jared’s attention. “It has a huge science lab and a whole building just for art! And everyone wears fancy uniforms and matching ties.”  
  
Jared’s eyes widen. “Really?” It sounds pretty cool, but he likes his school. They have Sloppy Joes on Wednesdays and he doesn’t have to wear a blazer.  
  
His mother nods. “Yup. And you’re going to go there one day.”  
  
Jared finds it again, helps his mother stare at it for a while. It looks pretty big, even from way up here, and Jared’s suddenly terrified by the prospect. He pulls his eyes away from the landscape to finds his mother staring down at him, a soft smile on her lips.  
  
“Will you teach me how to tie a tie?”  
  
She laughs, loud and bright, and pulls him tight against her side, squeezes him, breathes him in. She always likes to do that. “Yeah, I’ll teach you how tie a tie, doofus.”  
  
She never gets around to it, in the end.  
  
  
  
_

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

  
  
  
Welcome to Rhylee. Population 7,565.  
  
Jared’s vision is starting to go out of focus, the familiar text blurring together thanks to a combination of hot, hazy air and general weariness.  
  
It’s the kind of hot outside that renders clothes a nuisance. Jared’s hands are slick against the leather covering of the steering wheel, and he taps a disjointed rhythm against it as the radio continues to sing along in the background. Some guy crooning about _Georgia pine and cold beers and the love in his girl’s eyes._  
  
If the heat isn’t a distinct giveaway he’s entered the southland, the radio stations definitely are.  
  
He flicks it off with a weary sigh and reclines against clammy leather seat. He hasn’t worked out how to turn the a/c on in his rental yet, so the windows are cracked and the warm breeze is carrying inside. He closes his eyes for a second. Smells heat and salt and horsemint.  
  
His phone is buzzing again, vibrating on the seat beside him, but he doesn’t need to open his eyes to see who’ll be displayed on the caller ID. He’s up to five missed calls now, and he knows he should call back to check in. Before Chad freaks out and sends out a search party. Before Sophia freaks out and tries to reschedule the exhibition.  
  
When he’d told them he was driving, Sophia’s eyes had almost popped from her skull.  
  
 _“Fifteen hours. Alone? Are you crazy?”_  
  
He’d spouted some excuse about the hassle of shipping canvases, of checking oils and brushes, of trusting a month’s worth of blood and sweat and tears to the heavy-handed United Airways staff. It was all just bullshit.  
  
Truth is, fifteen hours isn’t nearly enough prep time.  
  
The phone falls blissfully silent and then restarts with a vengeance. Jared sighs, grappling sideways and cutting the engine.  
  
 _“Thank fuck, it speaks!”_ Chad’s voice is part sarcasm, part relief, and Jared rubs one of his eyes tiredly, picks up a truck looming into view in his side mirror. _“You haven’t checked in since Little Rock, man. Sophia’s gettin’ twitchy.”_  
  
Jared watches himself smirk in his rear view. “Sophia?”  
  
Chad scoffs and Jared pictures his nonchalant shrug. _“Yeah, you know how chicks get, dude.”_  
  
The truck passes by in a cloud of dust and engine fumes. It’s the second car in twenty-three minutes; Jared likes to count these things while sweating his own body weight out in a stoic vehicle.  
  
 _“You close?”_  
  
Jared eyes a sign three yards up the road, paint chipped and nestled proudly in a spouting of Brown-Eyed Susans that line the road right out past Jared’s line of vision.  
  
“Close enough to spit,” he drawls, and Chad laughs.  
  
 _“That’s the spirit. Hurry the fuck up, dude; I think I have another half hour before my mom whips out the baby book.”_  
  
Jared pulls his eyes from the sign, sighs heavily to try to convey how very not okay he is with this. “Ten minutes.”  
  
He throws the phone back onto the passenger seat while checking his rear view for any sign of car number three. He comes up blank. Just empty road meeting white-hot sky.  
  
The radio springs back to life when he turns the engine back on; this time the guy seems to have lost the girl and is drowning his sorrows in beer. Go figure.  
  
The sign is stoic and looming as Jared rolls past, and Jared mentally tacks himself onto the census.  
  
Welcome to Rhylee. Population 7,566.  
  
  
:::::  
  
  
Chad’s parents live on Virgil Street.  
  
It’s not the biggest neighbourhood, but it’s not the smallest; the Murray residence falls right into that niche. Jared thinks that maybe that’s why he and Chad have always seemed to fall right into place. There are no security gates around the Murray house, no maids to line up your sneakers or grand inheritance cheques with Chad’s name on them. Chad is, out of all of them, closest to Jared in that way, even though his daddy still wears a tie to work and his momma organises luncheons like she’s getting paid for it.  
  
Chad and Sophia are reclining against the porch railings when Jared swings into the driveway; Sophia looks relived as she waves at Jared through the window. Chad is fidgety.  
  
“Seriously, I know you two can be a little overbearing, but a front porch vigil is too much, don’t you think?” Jared rolls his eyes, circling around to the back of the car to unload his bags from the trunk.  
  
Chad hops the porch rail and stalls Jared’s hand on his bag. “Uh, yeah…” he starts awkwardly, probably squinting behind his shades. “Change of plans, Jay.”  
  
Jared stares for a minute before slamming the trunk back down and resting a hand on it. “Excuse me?”  
  
Chad huffs a helpless sigh and pushes the glasses up onto his head. “My grandparents are in town, my mother’s got this huge benefit thing going on next weekend—some barbecue bullshit in the backyard—”  
  
“ _So_?”  
  
Chad frowns. “Mom’s put her Manolo down, Jay. No play dates, no sleepovers. At least not this weekend.”  
  
Jared’s face remains impassive. They can’t spend two weeks crammed into his dad’s place, that’s pretty much a given. “Okay, so what? A motel?”  
  
Chad looks resigned, casting a hesitant glance back at the porch where Sophia has a plastic suitcase and their pile of duffel bags looks like a sun lounger.  
  
“Not exactly, Jay.”  
  
  
  
  


::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

  
  
  
  
  
There isn’t anything particularly startling about the row of white houses above the beach of Chandler Cove.  
  
When he was little, Jared’s mother told him about how back during the war, they were used to house sailors’ wives. How every spring, rows and rows of tiny bright flowers could be seen lining the very edge of the cliff top, brighter and surer than any lighthouse beacon, driving their husbands home safe from the Gulf.  
  
Jared used to nod at the dreamy glaze in his mother’s eyes during those stories of lost heroes and lovelorn hearts, trying his hardest not to snort derisively. Lovely as he’s sure it may have been, he imagines that a war-torn crew of eighty would probably have preferred a mechanical floodlight guiding their way over a row of yellow daisies. Still, it had been a nice thought.  
  
There aren’t any sailors’ widows left in the houses now. A couple of the smaller houses were torn down years ago and never rebuilt, leaving a gaping hole in the row’s midsection like a six-year-old’s smile post tooth fairy.  
  
It meant that the remaining houses could be bought up and renovated. Expanded and modernised and sold for twice the asking price or used as summer houses for the pretentious and business-minded who had suddenly discovered the healing powers of sea air. The sailors’ houses had been hot property in Rhylee Jared’s whole life: a “flipper” ’s wet dream, the Hamptons of the South Coast.  
  
Jared isn’t surprised that the McCoys own one.  
  
:::::  
  
 _  
Jared meets Sandra McCoy when she’s fourteen and he’s only been thirteen for one month and nine days. It isn’t the first time Jared’s seen her, but it’s the first time they’ve spoken.  
  
It also happens to be his first day of high school.  
  
“Miss McCoy will give you the tour,” Ms Burrows, the overly-pleasant guidance counselor, is saying as she organises leaflets and schedules and maps into neat bundles for Jared to juggle along with his textbooks and backpack. “If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.”  
  
The documents are passed over with a blinding grin as Jared stares at them and tries not to gag on the bile rising in his throat. “Welcome to Charlton Academy, Jared.”  
  
Jared smiles shakily and pushes his chair back to stand once it becomes apparent he’s been dismissed.  
  
“Oh, and Jared?” He pauses at the door, turns back to see her still smiling. “We have a strict uniform policy here that we try to uphold.”  
  
She’s staring pointedly at his open collar and he lifts his hand to close the buttons. He’d fumbled with the tie for forty-five minutes in front of the mirror that morning before eventually just giving up and stuffing it into the side of his book bag. He didn’t care; the only person who had isn’t there to see it anyway.  
  
“Yes, ma’am.”  
  
Burrows grins and nods, sweeps a hand towards the door in a gesture that evidently means he’s forgiven, just this once. “Good. Have a nice day, Mr. Padalecki.”  
  
Jared nods agreeably, happy to escape the smiley-face-sticker aura of the office and still trying to get his shirt together when a voice snags his attention.  
  
“Jared Padalecki?”  
  
A familiar brunette girl bounces up from one of the benches as soon as his foot is out of the door. Her tie is perfect. Her navy blue tunic is pressed to precision and a ribbon holds her curls back. “Padalecki? Did I say that right?”  
  
Jared looks startled for a moment before he puts a name to her face and smiles back shakily. “Uh, yeah?”  
  
The girl steps forward and holds out her hand that isn’t clutching a binder. “Sandra McCoy.”  
  
The McCoy estate sits half a mile away from Jared’s neighbourhood, nestled amongst various other houses that don’t look much different from his apart from the fact that they’re three times the size and surrounded by security gates. Jared, like the rest of the paupers settled on Leighton Avenue and beyond, is allowed inside the first set of gates to admire the fine granite drives and strategically placed lawn ornaments, but is stopped at the second set, several hundred feet from the porches and front doors, by an intercom and a digital security pad to rival the one at Fort Knox.  
  
Jared reaches out and takes her hand, hoping that she doesn’t place his name.  
  
“Hi.”  
  
“So I have a copy of your schedule here,” a sheet of paper is slipped from her binder and waved between them, “and I’m supposed to give you the tour, right away, so…”  
  
Jared nods, slightly bewildered, and trails after her out of the office with a polite smile of thanks to the secretary who’s ignoring them completely in favor of filing.  
  
“Okay, so this is the office—obviously,” Sandy is saying, the tap of her shoes echoing off the empty hallways, and Jared hustles to keep up. “Ms Burrows is right in there most of the time. She’s cool; she likes to smile. A lot.”  
  
The Charlton Academy merges the middle school with the high school. Most of the kids enrolled here have known the layout since sixth grade. Jared’s guessing they already know their schedules back to front, and they’ve probably known their friends since kindergarten. One more reason he’s going to stick out like he’s got a neon arrow above his head.  
  
They cover the entire floor—home rooms, English department, social sciences—and then cross over the small courtyard outside towards the science block.  
  
“So you’re like, super smart, huh.” So far Jared has been trailing behind her, nodding politely and doing his best not to trip over his own feet. He startles at the question, mostly because it doesn’t really sound like a question at all.  
  
“Huh? What? No!” He feels a blush start to rise up his neck as she stares at the side of his face. “Not…not really.”  
  
“Dude,” Sandy pulls up short and indicates the science lab towering in front of them with a nod, “this is like, your fifth AP class and you’re what? Ten?”  
  
Jared bristles a little and brushes some of the shaggy hair out of his eyes. He’s pretty tall for is age—freakishly so—even though all the growth spurt seems to have done is make him more gangly and uncoordinated. His unruly mop of hair still gives his age away and he thinks maybe he should have talked his dad into cutting it over the summer.  
  
“I’m thirteen,” he tells her, trying not to sound petulant and completely highlight all the ways he’s so out of his depth. “I skipped third grade.”  
  
Sandy stares at him for a second longer and then shrugs, breezing past Jared and the science block and heading for the library. “You’re smart.”  
  
Jared sighs, glancing up at the lab and trying to commit his room number to memory before rushing after her.  
  
“If a little sloppy,” Sandy’s continuing and Jared skids to a stop, frowning down at his hastily buttoned shirt and almost wrinkle-free pants.  
  
Sandy pauses too, raises a dainty little eyebrow. “You do know you’re not wearing a tie, right?”  
  
Jared sighs and digs into the side pocket of his backpack, pulling out the blue-and-red striped monstrosity and holding it up guiltily. “What is it with this place and ties?”  
  
Sandy smirks again. “Well the Student Body Representative answer would be that uniforms help provide a positive sense of unity and a safer working environment.” A smile softens her expression and Jared feels some of the knots loosen in his stomach. “My answer would be that they give the staff here more disciplinary ammunition to hang you with.”  
  
Jared returns her little smile. “I can’t tie it,” he admits, and Sandy’s smile softens even more. She’s stepped forward and swiped the tie from his fingers before he can blink.  
  
“Here,” she slips the tie around her neck and has it done up in four quick flicks of her hand, “I’ll show you the cheat sheet method.”  
  
She slips the noose over her head and drapes it down over Jared’s. “See?” She slides the knot up and down the length of tie to show how it can be loosened and tightened without ever having to untie it.  
  
“Thanks,” Jared mumbles as she leans in to straighten it and flatten his collar down. His nose catches her hair and he smells fruit and coconut and his stomach tightens in a whole different way.  
  
“Don’t mention it.” Sandy grins, turning on her heel and beckoning him to keep up. “It’s not every day I get to teach a genius how to dress himself.”  
_  
  
:::::  
  
There are no flowers planted outside of 1213 Chandler Grove.  
  
There is, however, a hastily-painted purple wooden daisy stuck to the one of the porch railings that Jared can’t ever remember seeing before. Beside it, a rusty flower basket is acting as more of a potpourri holder. Somewhere, a sailor’s wife is turning in her grave.  
  
“It looks the same.”  
  
Jared wants to scoff and ask Chad exactly what he’d expected, but he doesn’t. He thinks, for a second, that maybe it’s because he’s afraid of the answer, but that’s ridiculous. Jared Padalecki stopped being afraid of this house a long time ago.  
  
“I think it’s beautiful.” Sophia runs her finger over one of the wooden petals as Chad leads them up the porch. The second step creaks when Jared’s foot lands on the corner and he tries to remember if it’s done that before.  
  
If his life was a movie, it would have. He would have laughed and smiled in remembrance and bent down to push one of the wooden panels aside and reveal the tiny hidey hole where they used to bury all of their secret folded notes. Every floorboard, every crevice would whisper to him—a hundred memories of summers past overwhelming him and dancing across his eyes in a dusty montage.  
  
As it is, it isn’t a movie. The panel creaks and then falls silent, and the porch door swings open before any of them can touch it. No montage memories overwhelm his delicate sensibilities; just the sight of Danni filling the doorway, all tousled hair and faultless lines.  
  
It’s just as well. They hadn’t had a secret hidey hole to house their secrets anyway. They did, as he recalls, have a shabby cork board hanging on a utility door that had seen better days. It was less a keeper of “secrets of a lovelorn heart” messages than “get milk” and “the lite beer is mine, fuck-heads” Post-Its.  
  
Jared imagines the sailors’ wives probably had a hidey hole somewhere to account for it.  
  
“Jesus Christ, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes!”  
  
Chad grins unabashedly as Danni leans against the door jamb and lets her eyes wander over them. She’s always been like that, Danni. It’s why she comes off as kind of an intimidating bitch if you don’t know her very well. She likes it best like that, though.  
  
“And aren’t you…” Chad looks her up and down and settles primarily on her chest. “ _Bigger_.” He ponders that for a moment, then nods assuredly. “Yup, yeah, you’re definitely bigger.”  
  
Danni grins blindingly and lifts her hands to frame her breasts in a “ _ta da_ ” motion usually reserved for game show prizes. “Sure am.” She grins proudly. “They were my engagement gift. You like?”  
  
Jared just nods politely and hopes that Chad will pick up the slack on his part. Of course, his friend doesn’t fail.  
  
“Do I ever!” Chad bounds up to her and gives them one more appraising look before sweeping her slender frame into his arms, spinning a full circle as she yelps. He drops her back onto the porch and then points towards where Sophia is standing bemusedly in front of Jared. “This is Sophia.”  
  
Danni’s brown eyes pin Sophia as the brunette grins and steps forward, holding out her hand and rolling her eyes. “Sophia Bush.”  
  
“Danneel.” Danni grins back devilishly and steps forward to grab her hand, giving her a once-over. “So you’re the girlfriend, huh?” She smirks and raises a brow. “That’s brave of you.”  
  
Sophia smiles wryly as Chad grabs her hand away from Danni and tugs her to his side with a scowl. “We’re claiming the master bedroom,” he says loftily, whisking Sophia away to its confines at a pace that suggests “claiming” may in fact mean christening.”  
  
“It was nice to meet you, Danneel!” Sophia yells in retreat. “And your breasts.”  
  
Danni and Jared watch them disappear into the house; as soon as they’re gone, she turns to Jared, still dawdling on the steps.  
  
“And what about you, tiger?” Her expression would warrant a leer if it had been directed at a beer-bellied, balding, middle-aged guy.  
  
Jared shrugs a shoulder, his eyes darting uncomfortably to her chest. “Sure. They’re, um…nice, Danni.”  
  
Danneel throws her head back and cackles as she steps out onto the porch, leaving the door open behind her. “Nice to know.”  
  
She’s settling into real Danni now, Jared knows, the girl who tends to come out when she doesn’t have an audience. Her catlike supermodel façade drops away and leaves behind the red-headed sweetheart who used to spend whole afternoons making daisy chains in her backyard just to take endless photos of them all wearing them like tiaras and pearls.  
  
She slides past him and settles onto the top step, her long, jean-clad legs crossed neatly in front of her. “But I meant how are you doing?” She raises a hand to her eyes to shield them against the sun as she peers up at him. He looks back at her only so his eyes won’t wander back to the house. “Sandy said she couldn’t get a gage on you when she called.”  
  
“Sandy blind-sided me with a fucking phone call after five years,” Jared counters, sinking onto the step opposite Danneel. “What did she expect?”  
  
“Oh, you know her,” Danni says. “She’s as stubborn as she is tiny.”  
  
Jared snorts, his gaze wandering out beyond the porch right down to where the ocean stretches out beyond the cliffs. “I _knew_ her. It doesn’t count for much anymore.”  
  
“Don’t be stupid,” Danni scoffs, sliding the sunglasses out of her hair and down over her eyes, lounging back on her hands so her whole body stretches out across the steps into the sunshine. The diamond on her finger catches a ray and shines like ice water. “You know her just as well as she knows you. Five fucking years playing hide and seek in the city don’t change squat and you know it.”  
  
Jared can’t help raising an eyebrow amusedly at her matter-of-fact tone. “Oh, you think so, huh?”  
  
She raises her eyebrow right back above one expensive shade. “Honey, I _know_ so.”  
  
Jared chuckles and leans against the whitewashed porch rails, kicks his feet out on the steps to mirror Danni’s pose. “That why they sent you as the preliminary meet-and-greet, Miss Oracle?”  
  
Danni laughs and the sun catches the strands of hair falling across her face; for a second, Jared realises he’d forgotten how pretty she is when she’s being sincere. “They sent me because everyone else is at work and far too busy to drop by and make sure you’re not a potential flight risk.” She shrugs, apparently to take the sting off, and then sits up, leans forward, and catches Jared’s eyes over the rims of her glasses.  
  
“And because I wanted to tell you in person that you’re more of a fucking moron than I remember if you ever thought for even one fucking _second_ that you were going to spend one dazzling moment of my wedding day sitting in a shabby studio in New York City.”  
  
Jared stares back steadily as she finishes her tirade and then quirks his eyebrow again. “So does this guy know what he’s getting into, or what?”  
  
Danni deflates slightly, pushing up off her knees and holding out a hand to hoist Jared up as well.  
  
“Oh, he knows,” she tells him lightly as she bats the screen door out of her way and Jared trails her inside. “He just doesn’t have much choice in the matter.”  
  
For a split second, Jared can admit to himself that he’d maybe missed the hell out of Danneel Harris.  
  
  


::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

  
  
  
  
“Hey, we’re gonna take Sophia on the grand tour. You wanna come?”  
  
Jared looks up skeptically from where he’s slouched by the window to see Chad leaning against the door jamb to the bedroom. “A grand tour? Of Rhylee?”  
  
Chad shrugs. “Yeah, well, we have that ice parlour on sixth now.” He grins. “And Crazy Larry’s still preaching the end of times outside the town hall. Can you believe it? He’s got to be like, two hundred and five by now—that’s worth a look, dude!”  
  
Jared rolls his eyes and turns his gaze back out the glass. “Yeah, I’ll pass, thanks.”  
  
“Suit yourself,” Chad sing-songs, and Jared scowls at his reflection. “But you can’t spend the entire two weeks sulking like a pretty pretty princess in your bedroom, Jay.”  
  
Jared sits up and directs a middle finger towards the door. “I’ve just driven fifteen hours straight and I’m tired, fuckface.” He sweeps his hand over to where the contents of his car have been dumped into disorganised piles on his bed. Downstairs, six canvases lean tauntingly against the walls and tables. “And I kind of have stuff to get done here.”  
  
Chad rolls his eyes and pushes off the door frame. “Fine. Be productive.” He wanders down the hall mumbling something about _goddamn pigheadedness_ and Jared returns to slouching on his bed until he hears the scuffle of them leaving.  
  
It isn’t a huge house, but it’s big enough that they have their pick of rooms; Jared doesn’t know what the hell possessed him to choose this one. It could have been habit, but it’s probably masochism. Chad’s right: Jared’s subconscious has always been a fucking drama queen.  
  
Sighing, Jared trails his hand over the unpacked duffel and turns to stare back out of the window. This room isn’t the biggest, but it had always been his favourite. The window stretches floor to ceiling, looking right out over the ocean. Jared presses his face against the glass and follows a sailboat as it treks slowly towards the harbour.  
  
Everything is the same, really. The sheets are a different colour and there’s a dresser that Jared can’t remember being there before, but the air still smells of sea salt and the closet still squeaks on its hinges. The overstuffed armchair pointing towards the window is still a perfect place to sit and draw. It should be comforting, but all it’s done so far is make him slightly nauseous.  
  
The box of art supplies by his foot reminds him that, nauseous or not, he’s got a dozen unfinished canvases to rectify in just under three weeks. He finds it strangely comforting that that particular storm cloud can follow him to any state and county.  
  
But Chad is right. He’s just being being a fucking princess about it. So he’s stuck here for the next two weeks. So what?  
  
He’s sitting in a beach house that costs more money than he can count, overlooking the gulf, with nothing to do but paint and drink beer all afternoon. Life could be worse.  
  
Taking once last glance out of the dusty window, Jared sighs resolutely before grabbing up one of the boxes of paint and heading out into the hall. He meanders downstairs towards the huge glass doors off the kitchen that lead out to the back deck. The canvases are where he left them, and he grabs a clean one that’s leaning against one of the sofas.  
  
On the side table, fancy wooden photo frames are artfully scattered—baby Sandy splashing in the ocean, Mr McCoy proudly holding a golf trophy, Sandy and her parents smushed together under a blanket on the back of a yacht. There are a couple of them, of summers past—familiar faces, young and tan and laughing. Jared’s eyes snag on one near the back as he straightens up, canvas in hand, and he balances the box of brushes on his hip to pick it up.  
  
His fifteen-year-old self stares back at him from the very back porch he’s heading towards now. Dropped cloths are swaddled all around his feet and an easel is pushed up against the railings. He’s laughing at something off camera—blue and green paints are splattered up his bare arms and in his hair, a forgotten paintbrush drooping in his hand.  
  
He can’t remember who’d taken the picture—can’t even remember the day, not that it would be easy to pinpoint. He used to paint out there all the time. Always sketching and shading and making a mess. By the time he was sixteen, it had been jokingly dubbed his “studio.” Sandy used to tell everyone that when he was famous, she’d be able to hang a plaque on the wall with his name on it and everyone would come and take pictures of his humble beginnings. He remembers thinking that it was hilarious that the back deck of a house that cost more than a small airliner could be considered humble to anyone.  
  
He stares at the picture for a second more and then exhales, roughly, sliding it back onto the table and readjusting his grip on the box and the canvas. His eyes slide hesitantly to the deck, the French doors angled out and letting in warm winds from outside.  
  
He drops his supplies on the couch and walks to the doors empty-handed. The deck is empty when he pushes the doors open fully, his gaze tripping over the familiar wood. He leans against the door and stares at the railings until the sun starts to dip below the skyline in the distance.  
  
He doesn’t paint a thing.  
  
  


::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

  
  
  
 _  
Jared’s been in school two days before he really talks to anyone else.  
  
He’s always been something of a loner—being the youngest in his class kind of sealed the deal back in fourth grade—but he’s never had a problem getting on with people. He’s an odd kid: manic in the way he goes from excitable and ballsy with those he holds close to painfully reserved with the rest of the world. But making friends in Rhylee Elementary was drastically different from the constantly evolving social circles of Charlton Academy, it seems.  
  
So far, Jared’s spent his free periods in the library and eaten his lunch on an empty picnic table near the football field while trying to catch up on his assigned reading. Being by himself has never bothered him, but he knows that it often bothers other people. His dad had bombarded him with questions when he’d gotten home the night before—did he like his teachers? Did he make any friends? Did he think he was going to be able to cut it? Jared hates to think that his dad might go to bed knowing that it could very well be the case that the thousands of dollars of tuition fees would probably have been better spent refurbishing the garage. So he’d lied. “Sure,” he’d said, “I’ve made tons of friends. Of course I’ll cut it there. My teachers are great.” To be fair, his English Lit teacher seems partially cool, so he isn’t a complete liar.  
  
One thing that no one had lied about, however, is the art building. His mother was right. It’s huge.  
  
Jared stands in the entryway, gaping at the hallway for ten minutes before someone barrels through the doors he’s blocking and sends his papers and art pads flying across the floor.  
  
“Jesus Christ!” the linebacker cries as Jared bends down and starts to scoop up his stuff. “You gunning to be the new still life model or something? What’re you standing here like a fucking tool for?”  
  
Jared stares as the guy straightens and starts brushing imaginary debris off his shoulders and arms. His shirt is partially undone, the tie knotted but loose around his neck, and a diamond earring dazzles from his left ear. Jared doesn’t groan his dismay, but it’s a near thing. Two days at a new school and the first enemy he makes is Vanilla Ice and Nick Carter’s love child.  
  
“Uh…sorry?” Jared ventures as he piles his stuff into his arms and stands up shakily.  
  
The guy shrugs, bending down to swipe a lone scrap of paper off the floor beside his foot. “Here.” He shoves the paper into Jared’s overflowing hands. “You heading to freshman art?”  
  
Jared nods.  
  
“Cool, me too.” He walks off down the hall, backpack trailing on the floor behind him. “Ferris is a raging bitch if you miss the bell, dude, you better hustle.”  
  
Jared stares after him and watches him pause at one of the doors halfway down and turn back with an impatient stare. “What, you need a dog whistle or somethin’? Move your ass, Bambi!”  
  
And just like that, Jared makes his first friend. Even if it is a douche with an earring.  
_  
  
  
:::::  
  
  
“And some of the art stores on the marina are pretty impressive! I’ll have to remember to get their contact details before we head back to New York.”  
  
Jared’s been slouched at the kitchen table nursing the same beer for going on twenty minutes now while Sophia excitedly relays her afternoon with grand hand gestures and giddy pitch changes. She and Chad came back a half hour ago on a wave of sea air and musky heat to find Jared still lounging stoically on the back deck. They had brought beer, though, for which Jared is immensely grateful.  
  
“And that seafood place? The Boathouse? We have to eat there! The crab looked delicious.” She clearly picks up on the fact that Jared’s encouraging and agreeable humming noises have worn thin and reaches over to pry his beer out of his hands. “And what did you do today?” she asks, taking a sip as Jared glares and snatches it back.  
  
“Yeah.” Chad pulls a beer from the shelf before slamming the fridge closed and leaning back against the door. He looks over at Jared subtly as he pops the cap. “I don’t see much evidence of productivity. Too busy sulking in your tower, Rapunzel?”  
  
Jared smirks and kicks out a foot in the direction of his friend’s knees. “I’m not the one with the blond rinse, Goldilocks.” Chad dances out of range while Sophia uses the lapse in Jared’s attention to reclaim his beer.  
  
“You know he’s right, Jared. You’re not gonna get anything done cooped up in here.”  
  
Jared’s about to remind her that a, there’s a perfectly good six pack in the fridge, and b, where he decides to coop up is really none of her business, when Chad speaks up and snaps his attention to more pressing matters.  
  
“Exactly! Which is exactly why I’ve taken it upon myself to introduce you back into society.”  
  
Jared raises a dubious eyebrow. “Oh really?”  
  
Chad nods proudly and takes a swallow of beer. “And step one, luckily for you, involves more beer.”  
  
Of all the steps eventually to come, Jared thinks that as meddling plans go, this one has the foundations to be his favourite.  
  
  
  


:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

  
  
  
  
“Kane’s?”  
  
The red neon sign glints proudly in the dusky, late-afternoon light, and Jared pauses on the sidewalk and stares. “What happened to J.D.’s?”  
  
Chad shrugs and leads Sophia inside with the arm he has around her slender shoulders. “Jeff moved to Florida. I told you.”  
  
Jared pulls his eyes away from the sign. “ _Kane_ bought this?”  
  
Chad pulls them up short just in front of the doors and spins to look back at Jared on the curb. “Yeah, like two years ago, man—I _told_ you this.”  
  
Jared huffs out a breath of frustration and quells the urge to throw his hands up in irritation. “No. You didn’t.”  
  
Chad shrugs nonchalantly, shuffling out of the way as a couple of brunettes slip past. “Okay, so maybe you were being particularly emo that day and I didn’t want to poke the beast.” He reaches to pull the doors open, and country western spills out onto the sidewalk. “All that really matters is that he did, we’re here, and there’s beer and chasers within grabbing distance. Come _on_.”  
  
Inside, tables litter the expanse of the floor. A band is playing up front on a slightly elevated stage, two guitars and a crooner in a Stetson singing his own take on a Roger Miller number.  
  
It isn’t that different from J.D.’s—same frames on the wall; same bar, if a little bigger. The only real difference seems to be the sign out front, and the fact that the waitresses weaving in and out of the throngs of people and tables are all wearing plaid shirts tied above their navels.  
  
Jared follows Chad and Sophia towards the bar, turning sideways to slide between various swaying bodies with distracted apologies; he’s so busy monitoring where his limbs are that he doesn’t notice the body torpedoing towards him until it barrels into his midriff and nearly topples him over.  
  
“You’re late, Padalecki.” Her shampoo smells of fruit and coconut and Jared’s arms go around her tiny shoulders on instinct.  
  
“Sorry, McCoy.” The reply is on instinct too, but she doesn’t seem to notice its lack of sentiment or the stiffness of his arms as she looks up from his chest and beams at him.  
  
“I guess you’re forgiven,” Sandy says, still grinning; she turns to where Chad and Sophia have slunk back. “And you must be the girlfriend?” Sandy steps up and slides her arm through Sophia’s, tugging her in step through the crowd. “Jeez, Murray, you’re way out of your league, huh?”  
  
Jared turns to shoot Chad an irritated glare once they’ve disappeared back to wherever Sandy sprang from.  
  
“Really?”  
  
Chad shrugs, his face still distorted in something that looks like indignation as he stares after them. “I know!” he says shrilly, completely missing Jared’s point as well as his accusing glare. “What the hell’s she talking about— _out of my league_?”  
  
Chad’s still chuntering to himself as he pushes his way after them and Jared really has no choice but to follow; before he gets three steps into the crowd, a booming voice stops him in his tracks.  
  
“Well Hell’s bells, son, would ya lookie here?”  
  
Jared’s eyes slam shut as he straightens and turns towards the source of the amused drawl.  
  
Jared really doesn’t know where this notion came from that he could just breeze back into town and not run into anyone he knew. Of course, being at Kane’s, it’s pretty unsurprising that, you know - _Kane_ would be here.  
  
Jared sighs, watching Christian lean against the bar, a dish towel slung over one shoulder, his eyebrows tweaking amusedly somewhere near his hairline. Jared steps through a couple of people and nods towards him in greeting. “Chris.”  
  
Chris’s eyes narrow in that way Jared remembers. It always reminded him of a Rottweiler—sizing you up, trying to decide if you’re worth the run over to gnaw on your shin bone. It only lasts a second before he’s grinning, reaching out a hand and smacking Jared heartily in the shoulder.  
  
“Good to have you home, boy! I didn’t know you were in town.”  
  
Jared smirks, lifting a hand to rub at the back of his neck, his eyes skirting the familiar labels lining the bar behind Chris’s broad shoulders.  
  
“Yeah, it was a kind of last minute.”  
  
Chris barks a laugh, reaching under the counter and producing a bottle of Bud. “Last minute, huh?” He uncaps it with a quick flick of his wrist, slides it over towards Jared, and rests his elbows on the bar. “Seems like five years in the making to me.”  
  
Jared grabs up the beer, pours half of it down his throat. “Yeah, I guess.”  
  
Anyone else would have appeared to be fishing for information, but Jared knows Chris better than that. He’s like a fucking magic eight ball, always had been. He’s one of the only people Jared knows who can compress five years’ worth of conversation into a single glance.  
  
“You guess, huh?” He chuckles, straightening up and tipping his head back to the crowd. “Go on over—I’ll bring all y’all a round, on the house.”  
  
Jared nods, high tails it before he gets drawn in to another Dr. Phil moment fuelled by free alcohol. It takes no time at all to find his friends. The tables are laid out different, only slightly; there’s still a line of booths stage adjacent, and his friends are still pressed into the one second from the bathrooms. Creatures of habit, Jared supposes.  
  
Danni lifts a hand to get his attention once he breaks from the crowd and he slinks towards them. Chad and Sophia are crammed together against the wall, Danni and Sandy in the chairs filling out the circle.  
  
“Hey handsome,” Danni purrs once he’s slid into the booth next to Sophia, “come here often?”  
  
Jared smirks around his beer bottle and hums disinterestedly, playing along. “Used to. I have to say, though, it’s gone way down hill. Looks like they’re letting any old riffraff in.”  
  
Danni grins. “Yeah, I heard they even card now. Bummer.”  
  
Jared grins back, briefly, and leans back to survey the walls. “So Jeff Morgan moved to the sunshine state, huh?” he asks. Sandy and Danni nod gravely. “I gotta say, I didn’t see that one coming.”  
  
Chad looks up from where he’s whispering something into Sophia’s ear and looks exasperated. “Dude, I _told_ you…”  
  
“You told me shit!”  
  
Chad ducks back into the expanse of Sophia’s neck, chagrined. Sandy watches him fondly and leans her elbows forward on the table like she’s getting ready to address a board meeting.  
  
“The snappy version? He went on to seek out greener pastures,” she says, glancing sideways at where Danneel is sipping from her bottle, her eyes glinting knowingly.  
  
Jared bites. “And the longer version?”  
  
“Apparently involved a surprisingly large savings fund, a rundown bar on Miami beach, and one Samantha Ferris.”  
  
Jared nearly spits his mouthful of beer across the table. “Wait, Jeff and…Jeff and _Miss Ferris_?” Sandy and Danni share a look and then burst out laughing at his wide-eyed gape.  
  
“What? Art teachers can’t have a sex life now?”  
  
“Art teachers sure can,” Jared relents, still gaping, “but not Ms Ferris and Jeff. Eww,” his eyes slip shut on a wince, “I just got a _visual_!”  
  
Danni leans back and grins wolfishly at Jared. “They were actually pretty hot. Horny as hell—I tell you, something must happen when a girl hits forty… The number of times I walked in on them in the bathroom…”  
  
“Okay,” Jared slams his hand down on the table, rattling the glass bottles and cutting her off before his head explodes, “I’m _begging_ you not to finish that sentence.”  
  
“Dude, I’m pretty sure I told…”  
  
Chad cuts himself off at Jared’s glare and Sophia chuckles, patting his hair down indulgently. “Wow, I’ve been here less than twenty-four hours and I’ve already seen a two hundred year old preacher and unearthed a seemingly scandalous affair.” She turns to Jared with a teasing glint in her eyes. “And you said Rhylee was boring.”  
  
“Oh he did?” Danni says wryly. Jared smirks at her as a bare-bellied waitress appears at his elbow and slides a tray of beers and shooters onto the already cluttered table.  
  
“Courtesy of the boss, kids,” she says with a wink that lingers a little too long on Jared before sashaying away.  
  
Sandy chuckles into her beer, looking slyly at where Jared is shifting uncomfortably in his seat. “Score.”  
  
He frowns as Chad and Sophia pounce on the drinks. “You know I’m actually surprised they’re wearing shirts at all, considering Chris is running the place.”  
  
“Actually, I believe the cowboy shirts were Josh’s brain child,” Sandy says casually, plucking one of the shots and tipping it back in a fluid motion. “In fact, I’m pretty sure it was like, his only requirement before signing the lease.”  
  
Jared raises an eyebrow. “Josh?”  
  
Sandy grimaces at the alcoholic burn and shakes it off, passing another shot over to Danni. “Yeah, Josh. He co-owns with Chris and Steve.”  
  
Jared just stares as Sandy and Danni tip their second shots. Danni catches his stare when she lowers her arm. “Oh, I know. We’re surprised it’s still standing.”  
  
“Joshua Ackles owns this bar?”  
  
“Co-owns,” Sandy corrects tidily. Chad scoots forward slightly, leaning over Sophia to lower his voice.  
  
“This one I know I didn’t mention, right?”  
  
Jared’s about to lift his hand to smack Chad upside the head when a voice cuts through the din of their surroundings and Jared freezes.  
  
“Jesus, is Chris selling pot out of the backroom again? You can’t move in here…”  
  
Jared’s blood freezes and then runs molten hot, causing a weird hypothermia that makes his hand jolt and his stomach fall out. Across from him, Chad slowly sits back and Danni watches him hesitantly.  
  
Of course, Kane’s being co-owned by Josh Ackles, it should have been pretty unsurprising to find his brother there. The sheer notion that Jared was going to come home and find no trace or memory of him was pure stupidity on Jared’s part. But then, Jared’s always been a bit of dreamer.  
  
“Jared.” It comes out breathy and shocked, letting Jared know that he isn’t the only one being blindsided here.  
  
“Jensen.” It was supposed to be steady and nonchalant, polished with five years of steadily not caring at all. The thing is, Jared hasn’t ever needed to practise anything. He’s either good at something, or he isn’t. The first time his mother put a crayon in his hand, it was clear he had found his niche in life. The first time he picked up a football in gym class, it was pretty apparent that his athletic gene was recessive. Forced nonchalance doesn’t appear to be his forte, either.  
  
“I uh…” Jensen’s wide eyes skip over Sandy and then Danneel, then back to where Jared is trying to hold his own as his internal organs do the tango. “I didn’t know you were in town.”  
  
Jared just nods, a spastic little jolt of his chin, and lets thirty seconds of tense silence soak into his bones and calm him slightly before sliding his bottle onto the table, hoping to god that no one realises just how badly his fingers are shaking.  
  
“I came home for the wedding,” he says tersely, sliding out of the booth and past Jensen’s prone form. “Excuse me.”  
  
He’s out in the street before he realises exactly what direction he’s moving his feet; gulping down the cool air, leaning back against the wall beside the door, he lets the steady thump of music fade into white noise.  
  
For five years, Jared’s thought about exactly what he would do if he ever came back here. He thought he would be nonchalant and indifferent. He thought he would be cool and calm. Five years is a long time, after all. He got out—he moved on, he got everything he ever wanted. He’s an artist and he’s doing what he always dreamed of. He always thought he would be able to come back here after all these years and feel different. Feel older and wiser and blasé about the whole damn mess.  
  
Jared waits until his heart rate returns to a manageable speed before pushing off the wall and hurrying across the street.  
  
He’s about halfway back to the beach house when he realises that he’s just been kidding himself this whole time.  
  
He’s been back for less than a day and all he feels is fifteen years old again.   


  


:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::  


  


_“So Christy Dawson has the boobs, but Rachel Meadows has the ass…”  
  
Jared smiles tightly at the group of eighth grade girls who all look up from their lunches to glare disgustedly at Chad as they pass by their table. Beside him, Chad is still talking loudly and emphasizing his predicament with hand gestures.  
  
“I mean, they’re really pretty boobs, man. I’m torn!”  
  
Jared hadn’t actually asked to be involved in the dilemma at all, but he’s learnt pretty quickly that you’re not so much invited into Chad Murray’s conversations as you have them inflicted upon you. Chad is currently looking at Jared like he’s expecting him to dispense some kind of Gandhi-level wisdom on the whole situation, so Jared shrugs agreeably as they weave around the jock table and head towards the quad.  
  
“Uh, okay?”  
  
Chad rolls his eyes and hitches his backpack higher on his shoulder. “You know, you’re not very insightful for a child prodigy. Dude, you really should watch more Oprah.”  
  
The sun is out and the tables in the quad are packed with students.  
  
“I don’t think Oprah’s particularly interested in the boobs-versus-ass predicament of horny high school boys, Chad,” Jared mutters as they wind their way towards an empty table and Chad stops every five steps to either high five someone or violate someone’s personal space.  
  
Chad’s one of the atypical Charlton kids who’s been there since kindergarten. Jared’s pretty sure that he can be considered a friend; they hang out at lunchtimes and save each other seats in the classes they share. They don’t really seem to have much in common; Jared puts pretty much the entire foundation of their friendship down to the fact that Chad seems to know every member of the school by name, but either doesn’t want or have the jurisdiction to eat, sit with, or speak to them for more than fifteen minutes at a time.  
  
They’re five yards away from a particularly sequestered bench when Jared spots Sandy McCoy sitting at a table with a bunch of other people. He elbows Chad and pulls him away from the uninterested blonde he’s currently trying to woo.  
  
“Hey, I gotta ask Sandy something, alright? I’ll meet you over there…”  
  
He’s one step towards her table when Chad grabs his arm and pulls him up short. “Whoa!” Jared tries to pry Chad’s fingers loose of their painful death grip on his arm as Chad’s eyebrows disappear into his hairline. “I appreciate your enthusiasm, dude, I do—but you don’t just walk up and ask Sandy McCoy something.”  
  
He’s looking at Jared like he’s just revealed that he has lady parts. Jared frowns. “Why not?”  
  
“Uh, because she’s Sandy McCoy.”  
  
Jared rolls her eyes. “I need to borrow her AP Bio notes. She said to ask her for anything I need; I need Bio notes.”  
  
The eyebrows drop down to frame a disbelieving frown. “Sandra McCoy said you could have anything you wanted and you choose Bio notes?” Chad drops his hand from Jared’s arm and walks off towards their bench. “I have so much to teach you.”  
  
Sandy’s relaying some story in depth as Jared shadows her table, nervously shifting from foot to foot now that Chad has highlighted the fact that Sandra McCoy probably isn’t someone you just walk up to and interrupt. She looks up, squinting slightly in the sunlight, and studies Jared for a second.  
  
“I was wondering if I could maybe borrow your AP Bio notes from yesterday? I had a dentist appointment and I missed third period, and I heard that we’re maybe having a pop quiz on Friday…” The table stops talking and turns to stare at the intruder and Jared clears his throat nervously. There’s another pretty brunette sitting opposite Sandy, and two guys with their backs to him. Sandy still hasn’t shown any indication that she even knows who Jared is. One of the boys turns to stare as well; Jared recognizes him from his English Lit class.  
  
He quirks an intrigued eyebrow at Jared. “Why?”  
  
Jared rolls the question around in his brain. Misha Collin’s isn’t known for making much sense in English Lit either, but he’s looking at Jared like he’s expecting an answer of exquisitely detailed proportions.  
  
Jared feels a blush start to creep up his collar. “Uh, because pop quizzes can be a quick and effective study method?”  
  
Misha’s ice blue eyes don’t waver from Jared’s apparently intriguing form. “That’s good to know. But I meant why were you at the dentist. Are your teeth all fucked up?”  
  
Jared blinks. “Check up,” he says simply, and Misha nods, mollified by his answer as he turns back to his sandwich.  
  
Jared looks back to Sandy. “You…er, you told me to ask you if I needed anything—at the orientation thing.” He tries for a smile and goes for broke. It’s not like he can embarrass himself any further. “You’re the only person I know in that class.”  
  
Jared pauses, suddenly horrified by the thought that he’s just made himself out to be one of those people who thinks that a borrowed pencil or a shared textbook in class qualifies them as lifelong bosom buddies. Or worse, some weirdo loner who interrupts people’s lunches to sponge probably irrelevant lab notes off them.  
  
He’s about to excuse himself and return to a probably gloating Chad when Sandy breaks out in a big grin.  
  
“Yeah, sure,” she says, shuffling an inch over on the bench and reaching for the binder sitting in the middle of the table. “Come, sit down. I have them here—I’ll get them out for you.”  
  
Jared hesitates a second, glancing back over his shoulder to where Chad is watching him intently, munching away on a bag of chips as if they were cinema popcorn.  
  
He looks back at the space that Sandy’s opened up next to her. “That’s okay. I don’t have to sit down; I’m eating with Chad. Over there.” He gestures lamely over his shoulder and sees Chad give an enthusiastic wave when everyone’s attention is suddenly pulled from Jared to him.  
  
“Hey Murray!” she yells, not looking up from the binder, and Jared jolts at the unexpected shout. “Get over here!”  
  
Chad starts to scramble his stuff together as Sandy looks back at Jared with a small smile. “There. Now sit.”  
  
Jared slides into the space and throws his ratty book bag onto the grass behind him.  
  
“Guys, this is Jared Padalecki. He just started here. Jared, this is Misha and Genevieve and Jensen.”  
  
Jared looks reluctantly away from the bench to find three pairs of eyes trained on him.  
  
The girl—Genevieve—raises an eyebrow. “Where did you transfer from?”  
  
“I went to Rhylee,” Jared says, because it’s stupid to lie. And it’s not like he’s ashamed of where he lives. So he doesn’t own a pony and crap dollar bills. It doesn’t matter much, in the long run. They all eat from the same cafeteria and button the same blazers in the morning. No one’s background should be relevant in a place like Charlton, even though Jared knows that they most certainly, most irrefutably are.  
  
Genevieve perks up at his answer, though. “Oh, they have an awesome cheerleading team!” She turns to the guy on her left and grabs his forearm excitedly. “Alona said that they beat out St. James at Nationals last year! Can you believe that?”  
  
The guy rolls his eyes. “No. But if Alona said it, it must be true,” he drawls sarcastically, turning to Jared with an inquisitive smirk. Jared notices for the first time how startlingly green his eyes are. “What’s your name again?”  
  
“Jared Padalecki,” Sandy pipes up, still digging intently through her piles of paper. “Remember, I told you about him.” She looks up briefly to shoot Jared a tiny private smile. “He’s a genius.”  
  
Jensen snorts as he picks through his pile of potato chips. “At what? Riding your Big Wheel?”  
  
“I skipped third grade,” Jared mumbles, willing his face to stay skin-colored as he directs his words towards his shoelaces and Chad appears at their table, juggling his chips and book bag as he dumps himself into the space between Misha and Jensen.  
  
“Afternoon,” he mumbles around a mouthful of crumbs; Jensen frowns and shields his lunch tray from the attack. “What did I miss?”  
  
Sandy “ah ha”s in triumph as she slides a set of papers from the pile and lays them down in front of Jared with a flourish.  
  
Jensen smirks at Chad. “The fact that your dinner date is apparently a bona-fide genius and that third grade is only around to stunt our growth.”  
  
Chad nods. “Ah yeah, well, I knew that already.” He looks around the table eagerly. “So to what do I owe the pleasure of being invited to dine with the elite?”  
  
“Oh, you weren’t invited,” Genevieve assures him, taking a sip of her Pepsi and smiling sweetly. “Jared was invited. You’re an unwelcome accomplice.”  
  
Sandy laughs as Jared takes out his own binder and scrambles for a pen to start copying.  
  
“Aw, Chad, don’t listen to her—you’re special in your own way.”  
  
“That’s what my momma says!” Chad says agreeably, and Jensen throws a piece of brownie at him.  
  
Misha leans into his space as Jared bends his head to start writing. Jared slowly shifts his gaze up to the bright blue eyes boring into his.  
  
“So Jared. Do you floss regularly?”  
  
  
  
_

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

  
  
  
Nine AM and Jared’s on the back deck, his bare feet propped up against the railing, a cold coffee mug sitting on the arm of his wooden chair in front of his elbow.  
  
His eyes track a fishing boat making its way out of the harbor. It’s not the first one he’s seen this morning and it certainly won’t be the last; it’s Saturday, and the Rhylee Fish Market is renowned for its fresh catches.  
  
When Jared was a little kid, he and his mother would sit on the docks and point out the fishing vessels making their way in and out. They’d make up silly names for them and try to guess how many fish they’d caught that day. They’d sit there for hours, passing the time, but in truth, Jared didn’t care much for the docks. In his four-year-old mind, the fishing boats were always what took his daddy away, no matter how pretty they looked against the horizon.  
  
A white canvas is leant up underneath his feet, its dull white expanse taunting him in the early morning sunlight. It’s been sitting there as long as Jared has, but Jared just keeps looking at it blankly.  
  
Chad and Sophia are still asleep inside. Jared heard them stumble in only a couple of hours after him last night, probably once they realized he really wasn’t retuning to their party, following him back home out of fucked up loyalty or misplaced worry—both of which Chad probably didn’t condone and Sophia probably didn’t understand.  
  
Jared hadn’t slept at all. He’d laid on top of his sheets, fully clothed, and listened to Chad and Sophia stumble up the stairs, pause by his door, whisper to each other, and go to bed. He’d watched the dim light from his open window throw abstract shadows across the ceiling while the clock display flashed 1.30, and then 2.00, and then 3.45. When the dawn had started to burn away his shadow puppets, he’d dragged himself off the sheets and grabbed a canvas from the floor.  
  
Now his eyes are grainy and his face feels numb and his third cup of coffee really didn’t do anything other than dirty the mug.  
  
And of course his canvas is still blank.  
  
A muffled thump from somewhere inside snaps up his attention and he listens for the drag of feet against the hardwood floors. The likelihood of Chad being conscious at this hour is next to none and Jared steels himself for the patent twenty-question routine once Sophia comes out to find another white painting. He watches a shadow fall over him from the doorway and tilts his head back slowly.  
  
Turns out it’s neither of them.  
  
“What are you doing here?” Jared asks, his voice rough with the lack of sleep.  
  
Sandy props herself against the door frame and raises an eyebrow at his smart tone. “Well, it’s Saturday, I’m officially on summer vacation, and oh, yeah,” she jingles a set of keys in front of her face pointedly, “I own here.”  
  
Jared rolls his eyes, shifts his feet off the railing when she swats at them out of her way and slides onto the bench beside him. She glances at him before following his stare out to the ocean and leaning back.  
  
“You look like crap, Padalecki.” She lifts her sandaled feet to rest on the railing in front of her and Jared smiles slightly at the contrast between his feet and her tiny tanned toes with bright purple polish shining against the white wood of the decking.  
  
“So you skipped out on us last night,” she says lightly, the early morning breeze picking up a little and fluttering her hair, stray strands whipping into her eyes as she stares forwards. She lifts a hand to sweep them away. “Danni was pretty upset.”  
  
Jared smirks. “Oh really?”  
  
Sandy hums disinterestedly. “Yup. You know, she has very high expectations for men now that she’s found her Prince Charming.”  
  
“Funny, the invitation said she was marrying Tom Welling.”  
  
“Dr Welling isn’t the same keg-guzzling jock we used to know, you know.” Her voice is lofty, teasing, pulling Jared back into their yearbook memories even though she knows he would sooner be anywhere else. Probably just because she knows he would sooner be anywhere else.  
  
“I mean, he still drives a Mercedes and studies naked women six days a week, but he’s getting paid to do it now, so it’s totally acceptable.”  
  
Jared smirks wryly and looks over his shoulder at her. Her lips twitch slightly, and then she tilts her head forward to meet his eyes. “He’s head over heels for her, though. It’s pretty sweet.”  
  
“It’s still Tom Welling.”  
  
Her nose crinkles delicately. “I know.”  
  
They laugh, face to face, noses almost touching as they share the same giddy air for a second. They used to do this all the time: wrap themselves in blankets and hoodies and hide out here too early in the morning or too late at night. Sharing air, trading secrets, the rest of the world too quiet to speak in anything louder than a whisper.  
  
“So, what about you? Do you have a Prince Charming waiting at home for you, Miss McCoy?”  
  
Romance was their topic of choice back then. Everything sounded more exciting when you whispered it; first kisses, first dates, first times—they were all relived here, on this deck, with the whole ocean listening in from a few yards away.  
  
Sandy’s eyes dance a little. “No.” She’s lying, he’s pretty sure. Five years is a long time, but it isn’t long enough to teach Sandra McCoy how to tell a good lie. “You?”  
  
Jared tries to remember the last date he went on, but he can’t place the details. A few weeks ago, before Sophia gave him the deadline for the show, he’d bumped into one of his old college friends in a coffee shop in SoHo.  
  
Jonah had been in his Visual Arts class during his final year and Jared remembers vaguely noting that he was kind of averagely cute in that blond hair, dark eyes kind of way. They’d shared a coffee and then made arrangements to meet up for dinner later that night. Afterwards, Jared had invited him upstairs and fucked him against his kitchen counter. He’d slipped Jared his number on his way out, but then Sophia called two days later and he’d never gotten around to calling him back.  
  
He can’t remember the last date he went on before Jonah.  
  
“No,” he says, watching Sandy try to feign aloofness, “not really.”  
  
“What are you really doing here?” Jared asks after Sandy settles back to help him watch the sky for another second.  
  
Her hair’s up today in some roughly twisted knot on the top of her head with wispy tendrils falling out and fluttering around her cheeks. Like she just rolled out of bed and couldn’t be bothered to run a brush through it, never mind wash it out. Jared always liked her best like that: sluggish with a not-quite-unmanageable hangover and too sloppy to care. It always suited her better than the ribbons and pearls she wore around her folks.  
  
“I came for a favor, actually.”  
  
Jared is genuinely surprised. “I’m kind of in the midst of your last favor.”  
  
Sandy smirks at him. “That was a favor for Danni,” she corrects in that tidy way that five years of debate club taught her so well. “This one would be for me.”  
  
“Oh yeah? And what might that be?”  
  
“We’re working on the summer production at the Playhouse,” she says, her eyes wandering out over the railings again, like she’s just making conversation about it; Jared knows better. The Playhouse is more than a simple conversation. The Playhouse is probably one of the most important things in her whole world—or at least it used to be.  
  
“Ah, the Playhouse.” Jared sighs in understanding. “What Shakespearean tragedy is it this year?”  
  
He watches her eyes dance in mischief as she turns her nose up playfully and raises her voice. “I’m sorry, that’s privileged information for cast and crew members only.”  
  
It’s probably Shakespeare, or maybe Dickens. Something lengthy and angsty with a chance for the lead to project his voice a lot and the wardrobe department to artfully throw around the top hats and corsets they have to work with.  
  
He remembers a sixteen-year-old Jensen’s delighted guff of laughter when he’d told Jared what title to put on the posters.  
  
 _“Othello? Seriously? It’s summer, for chrissake, how ‘bout a little comedy?”  
  
“Well gee, Jay, how ‘bout we let Sandy and Gen loose with some face paint and we’ll put on a pantomime?” _  
  
Jared turns his gaze back out to the water, waiting for the other shoe to drop.  
  
“We need someone to help with the set,” Sandy says finally, nonchalance down to a T. “Painting and stuff.”  
  
Jared lets a laugh bubble up out of his throat. “You dragged me 2,000 miles to paint scenery for the RPH summer play? Seriously?”  
  
“Oh come on, it’ll be like old times.” Sandy picks up on the incredulity in his voice as he stares disbelievingly at the side of her head and she smiles winningly at him. “Just like Charlton—the art department joining forces with the drama dorks.”  
  
Jared remembers the smell of acrylic paint, the stickiness of the glue gun in his hand as Hamlet and Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet echoed through the almost-empty auditorium like white noise. The feel of flimsy, still-drying scenery boards tilting under his weight as he was pressed against them by greedy lips and eager hands during stage breaks or after rehearsal.  
  
“Don’t you think I have enough painting to do already?”  
  
“You can’t possibly be so busy as to deny thirty underprivileged kids a few shabbily-painted trees.” Her teasing air becomes strangely steady. “Don’t tell me the big city has knocked all the charitable optimism out of you.”  
  
Jared wants to tell her that New York had absolutely no claim to that at all, actually, but her suddenly seriousness makes him rethink it. She would probably rather find out that he turned to crack and sold his ass on the streets before finding out that the big bad city had taken his sunshine away. Sandy McCoy, ladies and gentlemen; you don’t have to understand her to love her.  
  
“Those kids are about as underprivileged as Beverly Hills,” Jared counters easily, moving again so they’re arm to arm and casting a sidelong warning glance at Sandy’s smug grin. “And my trees aren’t _shabby_.”  
  
She hums in what he takes to be agreement and thanks and then falls quiet. He watches her eyes track over his face.  
  
“Truth,” she says suddenly, and Jared can’t help laughter that tumbles from his lips. Sandy grins, bright and wide in the hazy morning sunlight.  
  
This was another one of their games. Her favorite, she’d always claimed. Dares were for pussies, and they weren’t half as productive.  
  
“I missed you,” Jared says, because he can probably lie with the best of them these days, but he could never lie to her. He did miss her, like a limb, even if he doesn’t quite know what to do with it yet. “Truth.”  
  
Her smile gets wistful and she blinks, her eyes softening and focusing on his face all at once. “You look grown up.”  
  
Jared laughs quietly and breaks their stare, rests his head on the top of the backrest. The fishing boat is almost out of sight now, just a tiny speck against the hazy blue backdrop of sea and summer skies. It’ll be back by dinner.  
  
“So did you really just come over to ask me to paint your trees?” he asks. Her tiny feet nudge at his and then she’s standing up, swatting at his side for him to do the same.  
  
“Actually I came over because you need to come help me pick out floral patterns.”  
  
Jared smothers a yawn, pushing his tired limbs into an upright position, and lets her tug him inside.  
  
“Of course I do.”  
  
  
:::::  
  
  
 _  
He’s shading a bowl of fruit for art class when his dad’s booming yell reaches him from the yard through his open bedroom window.  
  
“Jared! Door!”  
  
Jared sighs, pushing his art pad to one side and trudging out into the hall. It’s September, but the air’s still sticky with residual summer heat and his dad has had their a/c unit in pieces in the backyard for two days. His t-shirt is sticking to his back and he pads down the stairs in socks and ratty baseball shorts, mumbling to himself about why the hell his dad couldn’t answer his own damn door—and then bite the bullet and call a freakin’ repair guy.  
  
He’s on the last step when he finds that his dad has, in fact, answered his own damn door. And Sandy McCoy is on the other side of it.  
  
“Hi,” she says, waving her hand from where she’s lingering on his porch. Her hair is pulled off her face in a ponytail and she’s wearing a yellow sundress and flip flops.  
  
Jared tugs on the hem of his paint-stained T-shirt and wants to die.  
  
“Hi,” he replies, his eyes widening slightly when she doesn’t say anything further. “Uh…do you want something?”  
  
It’s Saturday. Jared racks his brains for any pressing reports or quizzes that they have coming up in Bio or History and comes up blank.  
  
Sandy lets out a bubbly little giggle, and cocks her head. “Yeah, actually. I wanted to ask you if you wanna come to the lake with us.”  
  
Jared stares at her stupidly for a second. “Huh?”  
  
“The lake,” Sandy repeats patiently as Jared realizes he’s still lingering on the stairs and steps out to meet her in the door frame. It’s not until he’s there that he sees Misha, Chad, and Jensen loitering at the end of his drive. “We’re gonna go swim. Soak up the last dregs of summer; apparently some college kids rigged a couple of rope swings down at Twin Creek. You in?”  
  
She seems particularly excited at the prospect, and Jared wonders exactly what a bunch of kids with temperature controlled swimming pools in their backyards would want with a couple of rope swings and a dirty lake.  
  
“Uh…” He plucks at his damp tee again, glances nervously over his shoulder at where his dad is still cursing and kicking pieces of metal around the yard. “Yeah, alright.”  
  
Sandy beams, rocking back on her fancy flip flops and then flicking her wrist towards him when he shows no further signs of movement. “Go! Go get your stuff!”  
  
He’s partway up the stairs when he pauses, turning to find her still lingering on his open porch. “Hey, how’d you know where I live?”  
  
Sandy shrugs a bare shoulder. “Chad. We didn’t have your number, so we figured…it was on our way.”  
  
Leighton was absolutely not on their way. Leighton is on nobody’s way—it’s actually one of the places in Rhylee that you tend to alter your route to avoid, but if that’s her story, who the hell is he to argue it?  
  
The lake is surprisingly quiet. Just a few groups of kids splashing in the water, doing dive bombs off the small dock, testing the limits of the two ropes twisted round a couple of overhanging branches.  
  
Jared only experiences slight trepidation when stripping off his T-shirt, the tight, uncomfortable knot in his belly dissolving into laughter as soon as Misha unabashedly strips to his Speedo and wades into the water.  
  
It’s late afternoon by the time Jared breaks from the water and pulls himself up to sit on the edge of the dock, pushing the dripping curtain of hair off his face. His shoulders are pink from the sun, and his eyes sting a little from the water; his whole body aches pleasantly from swimming and swinging and laughing. He watches as Sandy squeals hysterically where she’s balanced precariously on Misha’s shoulders before Chad comes up behind her and tickles her sides until she falls, and he can’t remember the last time he had so much fun.  
  
“Hey.”  
  
Jared looks up, squinting against the fading sunlight to find Jensen standing over him, a bottle of water clutched loosely in his hand. “Hey.”  
  
He doesn’t really know much about Jensen Ackles. They don’t share any classes the way he does with Sandy and Misha, and he doesn’t live near his neighborhood like he does with Chad. Sure, he knows his name—the Ackleses are a pretty big deal in Rhylee. “Old money,” his dad calls it. They own a bunch of oil companies and live in a mansion uptown. Alan Ackles came into Jared’s old school last year and did a presentation on business and investments. Jared had found the whole thing pretty dull at the time, but he remembers how intimidating the guy had seemed, coiffed to perfection in a fancy blue suit, spouting big words and demanding questions. Jensen doesn’t seem to take after him, though. He’s pretty quiet, actually, from what Jared can tell. He’s probably said the least to Jared out of all of them, passing only infrequent glances and hums of agreement, an occasional snark. Jared knows that he’s taking business classes, likes anything coffee-flavored, and is an active member of the school’s drama club. From what Chad’s told him, Jensen’s probably one of the richest people at the school, and definitely one of the most well known—not that Jared ever sees him with anyone other than Sandy and Misha.  
  
Jensen eases down next to Jared on the dock and dips his feet in the water, uncapping the bottle in his hands. “So you having fun?”  
  
Jared nods distantly and watches the others splash around. “Yeah, I am, actually.”  
  
“You sound surprised.” Jensen looks around at Jared and Jared looks back, shrugs slightly.  
  
“Maybe I am.” A smile tugs at his lips. “I wasn’t expecting to be spending my Saturday afternoon swimming with the Rhylee elite, you know.”  
  
Jensen holds his gaze a beat and then shifts his gaze back out to the water where Misha and Chad are chasing a horrified Sandy with what appears to be Misha’s Speedo on a stick.  
  
“No one can be rich when they’re swimming,” Jensen says suddenly, assuredly, and then he turns, grinning wide, and Jared’s struck by how ridiculously pretty Jensen Ackles is in the sunlight, his blond hair all spiked up and tiny droplets of water spattered amongst his freckles. “The bills would get wet.”  
  
Jared bursts out laughing and when Jensen splays his hand flat and warm between his shoulders to push him into the water, Jared feels something tighten and flutter in his stomach.  
_  
  
:::::  
  
They follow Madison Street down to 4th as the roads start to come alive and the shops start to flip their “Closed” signs to “Open” on either side of them like falling dominoes.  
  
They take Jared’s car, even though it’s early and still cool enough out to walk. They stroll through downtown, through the market as Sandy describes color patterns and Jared sips slowly from a takeout coffee he got at a diner near their parking bay. The owner is the same guy who ran it when it was an ice cream parlor and he recognized Jared immediately, grinning wide and slapping his shoulder and asking after his dad. Jared smiled tight, told him his dad was fine—back on shore in a couple of weeks—and thanked him politely for the coffee. _“On the house, kid, and you take care of yourself, ya hear?”_  
  
He isn’t ever a _kid_ anywhere other than Rhylee.  
  
“And she can’t have just _regular_ lilies. No, she has to have friggin’ _tiger_ lilies—can you believe it?”  
  
Jared smirks wryly as they stutter to a stop to let a guy with a trolley full of crates mount the curb. “It’s Danneel. Yes, I believe it.”  
  
Sandy laughs. “I guess. I suppose it’s pointless trying to change her this late in the game, huh?”  
  
They linger by one of the flower stalls so Sandy can poke at various petals and leaves. Jared leans up against the lamppost beside her and pretends to be useful. “And why are you picking out the table settings again?”  
  
“Well, because Danni’s mother is back in town and driving her insane, so apparently the fewer mother-daughter bonding exercises, the better; also because I’m nice and cute and generous and wanted an excuse to drag to you out of the house so I can hound you with questions under the guise of catching up.”  
  
Jared “ _ahh_ ”s knowingly, nodding his head and taking another gulp of too-hot coffee.  
  
They jump from one stall to the next and Sandy has her face buried in a bunch of Carolina lilies when she speaks again, her voice light and matter of fact: “So you do realize that you and that person we aren’t mentioning are going to have to put on your big boy pants for this thing, right?”  
  
Jared sighs, his eyes lingering on one of the crates, stuffed full of daisies. The gust of breath from his mouth ruffles his bangs and they fall messily in his eyes.  
  
“Yeah, I know.” And he does, really. He’d known last night, as soon as his heated face hit the air of the sidewalk. He knew as he’d dragged his feet back home. He knew this morning as he’d counted shadows on his ceiling, and then counted boats on the sea.  
  
He’s not a kid anymore, no matter what Rhylee might think. He’s a grown-up. He pays rent, for fuck’s sake—he can suck it up for a few measly weeks. He can be a big boy.  
  
He keeps his eyes on the flowers, tries to remember what nonchalance sounds like and clears his throat. “So how is he?”  
  
Sandy glances at him dubiously as he reaches out to run his fingers over the tiny white daisy petals. The sign painted on the crate brags two bunches for five dollars.  
  
“He’s good,” she replies slowly, cautiously. “Works too much, but then, what else is new?”  
  
Jared’s starting to wonder, actually. “He’s still at the company?” It isn’t much of a question; Jared had always figured as much. Still, stranger things have happened since he rolled back into town.  
  
Sandy nods and there’s a sadness to her voice this time. “Yeah, he’s still with the company. After Josh bough the bar, I think we resigned ourselves to the fact he’ll live and die as CEO of Ackles Incorporated.” She slides the lilies back into their place and gives him a dazzling smile. “But he gets access to the corporate box at Cowboys stadium—that’s still pretty neat.”  
  
Jared returns her smile because it seems to be there for that purpose and then averts his gaze back to the stall, tries to settle his tone for a casual conversation. He so has this under control.  
  
“So is he—seeing anyone?” He winces inwardly at the very non-nonchalant way it comes out and pretends not to see Sandy hide her grin behind a newly selected bouquet. He slides two bunches of the daises out of their holders and digs into his pocket for change.  
  
“No,” she replies, and really, she’s worse than Jared at this forced indifference thing. “Not a soul.”  
  
Jared just nods, because he’s not really sure what he’s supposed to say to that. He smiles at the vendor and tells him to keep the change as Sandy gestures over her shoulder to the row of shops behind them.  
  
“I need to hit the arts and craft place; do you need a break from frills and flowers yet?”  
  
Jared smirks and throws his empty coffee cup towards one of the trash cans on the sidewalk. “I feel like an embarrassment to my kind saying so, but…” He hands her one of the bunches and leans forward to brush a kiss against the smooth skin of her cheek. “I actually have an errand to run. Can I pick you up in half an hour?”  
  
She smiles indulgently and lifts the daisies to her nose. “Make it an hour. I’m meeting Danni at the bakery in twenty minutes.  
  
“And don’t be late!” she hollers at him as he wanders back to the car. “Remember, you’re already on thin ice with her majesty!”  
  
  


::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

  
  
  
 _  
Jared slips into their lives like he’s been there forever.  
  
He eats lunch with them in the quad every day, apart from Wednesdays when he has art club and only gets ten minutes to wolf down the pizza and cookies that they’ve hoarded for him. He spends most Monday and Thursday nights after school in the theatre with Chad, watching Jensen and Sandy and Misha run lines and practice dress rehearsals. He sits in the back row and sketches while Jensen recites Hamlet and Sandy touches up makeup and Chad’s good-natured heckles are met with balled up paper, flying props, or the occasional shoe.  
  
November bleeds into winter on a sea of school assignments and Shakespeare performances and weekend move marathons and before Jared knows it, they’re breaking for Christmas.  
  
“So you’re coming to the Ackleses’ tomorrow night, right?” Sandy says as they push pens and papers back into their backpacks after Bio. Jared looks up, confused.  
  
“To Jensen’s? Why?”  
  
Sandy looks somewhat aghast. “Duh, for the annual Ackles holiday bash.”  
  
Jared hadn’t actually heard of any such event. He hasn’t ever set foot in Jensen’s house, either. He’s been to the McCoys’ on occasion, the odd movie night at Chad’s, and Misha’s uncle’s condo where there’s a beach party for the entirety of Rhylee every other weekend, but the fact that he’s never actually been to Jensen’s never seemed like a big deal. Of course, it’s partly due to the fact that he’s never actually been invited into Jensen’s house.  
  
“Uh, I haven’t exactly been invited,” Jared mumbles, feeling suddenly ridiculous and awkward in away he hasn’t in a long time. “I can’t just turn up.”  
  
Sandy rolls her eyes in that way she does when he thinks he’s being a total goof. “Of course you’re invited. Jen asked me to make sure you’re coming!” She slings her backpack over her shoulder and leads them out of the labs, her arm slipping through Jared’s once they’re in the hall and squeezing giddily. “Its gonna be great—the Ackles Christmas parties are a sight to see.”  
  
Compared to Christmas Day with his dad and their annual rotisserie chicken, Jared supposes they probably are.  
  
Of course, Sandy wasn’t lying.  
  
He and Chad arrive fashionably late and slink through the open security gates and up the drive that’s packed with expensive cars being maneuvered into position by valets in elf hats. They bypass the front door as instructed and Jared’s still gaping at the elaborate brick and marble house when Chad tugs him around the corner towards the pool house where music is already streaming through the walls.  
  
“Ho, ho, ho!” They’ve barely touched their knuckles to the tinsel-draped door when it swings open and they’re greeted by a guy in a Santa hat, jingle bell boxer shorts, and a flashing red bow tie. He’s got what appears to be a pitcher of alcohol in his right hand and is grinning at them madly. Jared’s eyes widen and Chad clears his throat awkwardly, attempting to avert his eyes.  
  
Jared’s about to ask if they actually have the right party when the guy steps closer and throws his arms around their shoulders; whatever is in the jug sloshes over the rim and down Chad’s shirt sleeve.  
  
The guy tugs them inside and kicks the door shut. “Hey, lookie what I found!” he hollers in Jared’s ear. “Party favors!”  
  
Now that they’re inside, Jared can see that the pool house is pretty much a studio apartment: a small kitchen gives way to a living area stocked with a huge L-shaped sofa, bean bag chairs and pillow strewn everywhere. Bottles line the kitchen counter and a couple of kegs bookend each side. Some soft rock Christmas album is playing loudly and there are people scatted around. Jared’s eyes dart around the dim light to find familiarity and pause on Sandy in the kitchen talking animatedly to Genevieve and Alona Tal. Jensen’s at the pool table, propped on a cue and drinking a beer as he laughs with some scruffy cowboy-type. He stops and looks up at the guy’s yell, and his face breaks out in a grin. He’s halfway to wasted, Jared’s pretty certain.  
  
“This here gathering’s by invite only, boys,” the guy says, tugging Jared and Chad in tighter with his elbows. He’s most certainly all the way wasted. “You know the secret password?”  
  
“Uh…” Chad shoots him a baffled sideways glance. “Open sesame?”  
  
The guy barks out a hysterical laugh and releases them from his hold. “It’ll do,” he says, immediately pouring them copious amounts of alcohol. “I’m Josh Ackles, and I’ll be your host for this evening. If you want anything, please don’t hesitate to ask the girls.” He dodges Alona’s hearty slap and dances away, singing Jingle Bells at the top of his lungs.  
  
“So what’s everyone’s New Year’s resolution?” Three hours later, Jared can say without hesitation that everyone is most certainly wasted. Josh and the others trickled out into the main party after the booze ran low and now it’s just Jared and his friends left, slouched to varying degrees on the sofa and bean bag chairs.  
  
“That’s New Year’s, dumbass,” Chad slurs, throwing a pillow half-heartedly at Misha’s head. “This is Christmas!”  
  
Misha frowns, his eyes unfocused. “Oh. Well then what’s Christmas about?”  
  
“Uh…presents?”  
  
“Good will to all men!” Sandy pipes up, dissolving into giggles at Genevieve’s side.  
  
“Peace on Earth.” Jared nods solemnly.  
  
Misha’s frown deepens. “Oh.” He blinks. “Christmas is pretty dull.”  
  
“Okay, I have one.” Genevieve sits forward, slightly unsteady now that Sandy’s full weight is braced against her. “Where do you think you’ll be five years from now?”  
  
“I’m sorry, is this a party or a job interview?” Genevieve scowls and throws her remaining pillow at Jensen’s face, but he just laughs and catches it, stuffing it behind his back against the bottom of the sofa. He’s had as much to drink as they have, but he doesn’t seem to be as affected as Jared, who was pushed into the overstuffed arm chair twenty minutes earlier and told to “stay” after practically running himself into a coffee table.  
  
“I think I’ll be married.” Sandy sighs, her eyes drooping closed under the weight of rum punch and Christmas cookies. “Someone cute and funny and kind who knows absolutely nothing about stocks and business and shares. With a butt you can bounce nickels off of.”  
  
“I want to be happy too.” Misha sighs dreamily—he’s slouched upside down on the edge of the sofa, his feet thrown over the backrest and his head dangling above the floor. His hands are crossed neatly over his stomach and he raises one to gesture idly. “Doing something Zen and cool. But, you know, with a pension plan and health benefits.” He nods resolutely. “Yup, definitely something like that.”  
  
Genevieve watches him blankly for a second and then turns to Jensen. “What about you, Jensen? You picking up your daddy’s reigns at the company once you graduate?”  
  
Jensen shrugs and runs his finger idly around the rim of his Jack and coke. “Nah, I’m pretty sure Josh has that covered.” He tips his head back against the couch cushions and Jared unconsciously traces the line of his throat with his eyes. Jared can count the number of times he’s sipped his own alcohol on one hand; like most things he’s done in the last three months, there’s been a learning curve.  
  
So far, he’s learnt it makes him ridiculously sloppy.  
  
“I think I might go to drama school.”  
  
“Ah, a thespian,” Misha says in his Oscar Wilde voice, and Jensen shrugs.  
  
“Yeah. My dad’ll be pretty pissed, but who cares, right? Josh can finish Princeton—be the Robin to his Batman. Then I’ll be free as a bird.”  
  
“I think you’ll be an awesome actor, Jensen Ackles,” Sandy mumbles sleepily, and Jared profusely agrees. He is a good actor. And he loves the drama club. And he was a freakin’ awesome Mercutio, regardless of Chad’s inappropriate heckling about tights and short shorts.  
  
“And you, green bean?”  
  
Jared looks up from the stray upholstery thread he’s plucking at and tries super hard not to dwell too much on the idea of Jensen in tights as Genevieve stares at him intently. He’s always been just a tiny bit frightened of Genevieve Cortese. Probably in large part because she sometimes looks at him like he’s a tasty delight.  
  
He shrugs. “I don’t know,” he lies, not because he hasn’t got plans; he does…but his plans can never really be like theirs. He can’t finish school and go to whatever college he wants and walk into a job in his dad’s company if his dreams don’t pan out the way he wants them to. He’ll probably finish school and get a scholarship in state and try to make ends meet between painting and dock work.  
  
“You don’t know?” Genevieve deadpans.  
  
“Of course you know,” Jensen rebukes mildly, stretching his legs out across the floor. “You’ll graduate early and go to Chicago and be a huge fucking success.”  
  
Jared’s eyes scrunch in confusion; he puts it down to the alcohol. “Why Chicago?”  
  
Jensen shrugs, his fingers still tracing his glass. “That’s where all the real artists go to get famous.”  
  
He says it so matter of factly that Jared stalls for a second. It’s the first time since his mother died that Jared’s ever heard someone say it like that. Like his art is really anything other than a burden. Fifteen years old, drunk off his ass, lounging in his kind-of-friend's pool house is the first time he’s ever realised that it’s exactly what he’s always wanted to be  
  
The next morning, when they’ve all unstuck themselves from the floor and upholstery and Chad’s busy vomiting in the sink and Jared’s trying to stop his head from exploding all over the Ackleses’ expensive-looking rug, Jensen pulls him aside and grabs something from behind the TV.  
  
“Here.” Jared blinks dumbly at the plastic bag that Jensen’s thrusting at him. Christmas isn’t for four days, and they weren’t supposed to buy each other things.  
  
“I got you in Secret Santa,” he says with a shrug. “I was gonna wrap it up, but you might as well have it now.”  
  
Jared drew Misha. He got him a pair of stress balls with the Dali Lama's face emblazoned on the size and a hat with cat ears sewn onto it. He has a feeling the hat will get more use than the balls.  
  
“Oh, thanks.” Jared takes the bag, his limbs moving as sluggishly as his brain this morning. He peeks inside and pulls out a small plastic case; turning it over in his hand, he finds a row of expensive-looking acrylic paint tubes.  
  
“I know you’re always drawing stuff, but I thought maybe you could branch out. You know, get ready for Chicago Arts and stuff.” Jensen’s shifting his feet a little when Jared looks at him and if he didn't know any better, Jared would say that Jensen Ackles is nervous. “The guy at the art store said those were the best.”  
  
“Yeah, they are,” Jared mumbles, looking back down at them for a moment before reaching into the bag and pulling something else out.  
  
“That’s for keeping your freakish bangs out of your eyes when you’re using them,” Jensen says, and Jared chuckles as he turns the black beret over in his fingers.  
  
“Thanks, Jensen,” Jared says sincerely as Jensen’s unsure face breaks into a relieved grin and Jared’s pounding headache eases just a touch.  
  
“You’re welcome.”  
  
All in all, it’s the best Christmas Jared’s had in forever.  
_  
  
:::::  
  
Eleven AM finds Jared dragging his feet along the sidewalks of Honey Grove.  
  
The tiny suburb consists mostly of rows and rows of neat little bungalows nestled amongst the clutter of rock beaches that line a small part of the Rhylee coast and the downtown markets. It isn’t really a retirement community, but the quiet cul de sac and smaller houses have attracted most of Rhylee’s older generations over the years and resulted in most of the houses being taken up by older couples or retirees eager to leave the tourist traps of downtown behind and immerse themselves in bird watching and bridge tournaments.  
  
Jared runs his fingers along the orderly wooden fences that separate the bungalows’ front yards from the sidewalk and slows to a stop beside the gate of number six. There’s a woman kneeling over one of the flowerbeds, her back turned towards him; a huge sunhat flops over her head to shade her face and the back of her neck. An old radio sits on the porch and Jared’s lips twitch as he hears her humming along to the old Drifters song playing.  
  
He knocks on the front of the gate, making a dull noise that does little to rise above the tin of the radio and the gulls cawing as they fly over from the coast.  
  
“Looking good this year,” Jared yells, raising his voice. “I think the roses are winners for sure.”  
  
She jolts, turning on her knees to look in his direction and tipping her hat back, lifting her hand to guard her exposed eyes. She stares at him for a minute; the Drifters play on in the background.  
  
“Well it’s a helluva job I wasn’t holdin’ my breath for this visit, wasn’t it?”  
  
The Texan is thick in her drawl and it sounds like molasses and home and Jared wants to smile. Instead he shifts guilty, daises hanging by his side.  
  
“Yeah, I guess it’s been a while, huh?”  
  
“You gotta be careful making girls my age wait a while, young man.” Adelaide Ackles raises her eyebrow loftily and suddenly Jared’s fourteen again, caught skipping class red handed. “We ain’t got that many whiles left to sit around and pine, y’know.”  
  
Jared does smile then. “Nah, you’re not going anywhere.”  
  
She tilts her head to the side, purses her lips slightly and hauls herself to her feet, brushing off her pants with her padded gloves. “Hmm, lucky for you.”  
  
She turns and starts climbing the porch steps without looking back. “Well you comin’ in or you just gonna decorate my sidewalk some more?”  
  
Jared shakes his head and reaches over to unlatch the gate.  
  
  
:::::  
  
  
She’s pulling a pitcher of lemonade from the fridge when Jared walks in, his eyes skittering over the familiar layout of the open rooms. Everything smells of lavender and soil and fresh air and his insides clench with memories. Addie’s house is probably the closest thing to a bona-fide home that Jared has ever seen.  
  
“Sit your ass down, this ain’t a museum.”  
  
Jared grins at a glass cabinet housing various pieces of painted pottery and slides over to the tiny table beside the kitchenette. He lays the flowers beside his elbow as Addie walks over, balancing a pitcher and two glasses in her now gloveless hands. She clanks the lemonade onto the table and a glass down in front of him and then takes the seat beside him, resting her chin on her upturned palm and leaning towards the daises.  
  
“So are those pity flowers or ‘I’m sorry’ flowers or five years of belated birthday flowers…?”  
  
Jared smirks and reaches for the lemonade pitcher. “I sent you your birthday flowers.”  
  
She hums and Jared looks up from pouring to see her looking over his head. “I know.”  
  
Jared had seen them as soon as he’d come in: four box prints lined in a row, all showing various plants and flowers in bloom. He remembers painting every one. Remembers boxing them up and shipping them off with a note, “ _Happy Birthday X_.” He’d never signed them. There wasn’t any need to. She’d know who they were from without even looking at the shipping label.  
  
“So, I heard Josh bought a bar?” he says in lieu of continuing that conversation. He takes a gulp of the lemonade and waits for the kick. Addie always liked her lemonade to keep you on your toes. “I bet his daddy was overjoyed.”  
  
“We’ve upped his blood pressure medication,” she says dryly and Jared laughs; her lips twitch at the sound.  
  
“So have you seen our boy yet?” she asks innocently.  
  
Addie rarely beats around the bush. You might be tempted to put it down to age, but it isn’t that; it’s just her. She doesn’t make a habit of abiding by the WASP margins that she was raised in; she likes problems to be cut open and spilled over her kitchen table. If you happen to cry and throw things because of it, all the better.  
  
Jared raises an eyebrow at her ingenuous stare. “Like he hasn’t already called and told you all about it.”  
  
She laughs, hollowly, and breaks her stare reaching for the pitcher and fill her own glass. “Believe it or not, some things do surpass grandson-grandmother disclosure agreements.”  
  
Jared levels her with a look. “I don’t believe it.”  
  
“Well I don’t believe a smart, talented, _grown ass_ man ran scared from a crowded bar last night, but there you go.” Her voice is breezy light as she tops off her glass and sets the pitcher back, holding his stare steadily.  
  
“What happened to surpassing the grandson-grandmother disclosure agreement?” Jared squawks, and Addie waves a hand dismissively.  
  
“It doesn’t extend to honorary grandchildren.”  
  
Jared sighs. “Sandy?”  
  
“Danneel,” Addie replies, leaning back to reach for something off the counter behind them. “She came by this morning to drop off the invitations for that rehearsal dinner of hers.” Addie turns back with a small engraved card between her fingers and waves it in front of Jared’s face. “Pretty swanky, huh?”  
  
Jared smiles wryly, finishing off his glass. “Best of the best.”  
  
Addie stands up and clears his glass as soon as it hits the table, whisks it off to the kitchen and crosses her arms over her chest, looking at him challengingly from across the room. “So are you planning on sticking around a while, or should I expect another impromptu visit five years from now?”  
  
Jared grins, charmingly, but it’s not real. Not really. She’ll know that, though. “Aw, I wouldn’t dream of making you wait a while, Adelaide.” He stands up, picks up the daisies, and drops them into the empty vase in the centre of the table. “Who knows how many you have left.”  
  
He winks at her as she mumbles something about smart-asses with a fond smile tugging at her lips. He nods towards the back door.  
  
“Speaking of the big event—I’m supposed to pick Bridezilla and Sandy up ten minutes ago.” He raises his eyebrows and smiles fondly. “We about done here?”  
  
She narrows her eyes and then shakes her head. “One more thing,” she says firmly, walking over to him with measured strides. Jared braces himself for a slap or a punch or at least a thorough berating but instead she pushes up onto her tip toes and pulls him down into a hug with surprising strength.  
  
He wraps her up in his arms, holds on tight, and squeezes his eyes shut as her familiar whisper brushes against his ear.  
  
“Welcome home, baby.”  
  
  


::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

  
  
  
 _  
They meet Danneel Harris in their sophomore year. She transfers in five weeks after everyone else has started the semester and rumors spread like wildfire.  
  
“I heard her mother’s in her fourth marriage,” Alona tells them over lunch as Genevieve stares wide-eyed and Jared and Jensen exchange wry glances. “Carly Reichs said that Julie Morris told her this is her third transfer in two years. Third. I mean, she’s clearly troubled.”  
  
“Why? ‘Cause her family moves a lot?”  
  
Alona shoots Jared a scathing look for interrupting her gossip. “She and her mother live on Elm Grove, Jared. Single parent families don’t live on Elm Grove. I’m thinking black widow. For sure.”  
  
Genevieve lets out a little gasp and Jared rolls his eyes.  
  
“Let it go, man,” Jensen mumbles as Gen and Alona discuss the possibility of her being in the Witness Protection Program. “You’re wasting your breath.”  
  
To be honest, Jared half expects Danni to be at their table the next day. Sandy is still the meet-and-greet student body president, after all, and she’s never been one to bypass a stray. But even Sandy seems to have her doubts about the auburn-haired newbie.  
  
“I dunno, I think she might be a raving bitch,” she confides the next day at lunch as Chad, Jensen, and Jared exchange shocked looks. “She kicked Bobby Newman in the nuts yesterday because he touched her ass in dodge ball.”  
  
Jensen bursts out laughing. “Good. Bobby Newman was due for a nut kicking; the guy’s a douchebag.” Which is absolutely true, Jared agrees, but student body presidents rarely condone kicking folks in the nuts.  
  
“And she called my ribbon preppy at orientation.” Sandy brushes her fingers against the white ribbon holding her braid together. She looks up suddenly, as if a thought has just occurred to her. “Is it preppy?”  
  
Jared and Chad and Jensen shake their heads immediately.  
  
“No!”  
  
“Of course not!”  
  
“Ain’t nothing wrong with that, girl!”  
  
Sandy’s indifference lasts all of a week as rumors of witness protection, stints in juvie, and an unwanted pregnancy by no less than five different members of the football team follow Danneel Harris around like shifting storm clouds. It could be because she’s new, or maybe because she seems like the kind of girl who can take it, but Jared’s pretty sure it’s neither.  
  
She’s too pretty for the cheerleaders, too spunky for the student committee, too bitchy for any of the after-school clubs.  
  
Jared realizes pretty quickly that Danneel Harris is most likely not a troubled bitch at all. She just doesn’t really fit in at Charlton Academy.  
  
On the sixth day of her transfer, Jared and Misha find Sandy tugging a seemingly reluctant Danneel towards their usual lunch table.  
  
“Hey guys. This is Danneel.” Jared notices Genevieve’s slightly horrified expression and grins extra wide, just for her.  
  
“Hi Danneel.”  
  
“She just transferred from Nevada. Her dad’s in the military, can you believe that?”  
  
Danneel slides her lunch tray between Misha and Sandy and sits down hesitantly as Misha wastes no time in leaning into her personal space and lowering his voice to a covert whisper.  
  
“So Danneel. What can you tell me about Area 51?”  
  
Jared thinks she’ll fit in just fine.  
_  
  
  
:::::  
  
  
Somehow, Jared’s coerced to going back to Kane’s again that night.  
  
The lights are just as dim, the music is just as loud, and the same familiar brunette is waving from the same booth in the corner. Jared takes a deep breath of slightly smoggy air and wanders over; Sophia sizes him up through narrowed eyes.  
  
“So I’m not even going to ask how today’s painting went,” she announces, throwing her hands up in surrender with a kind of carelessness that tells Jared she’s already half wasted. “I want to be surprised!”  
  
“I think that’s probably wise,” Jared deadpans, scanning the table for a beer count. Sandy’s cradling something pink and frothy and Chad and Sophia are each well past their first beers.  
  
“We’re waiting on Danni; Tom had a late meeting.” That’s how Danni reeled him into this in the first place: a chance to meet Tom Welling turned Dr. Welling turned Danni’s future husband. Jensen’s nowhere in sight, though, so Jared thanks the universe for small favors.  
  
“I’m getting drinks,” Jared says, because at this point he figures alcohol might be his only ally; he’s immediately bombarded with a drink order the length of his forearm.  
  
He’s tapping the bar with a straw while he waits for Sophia’s creamy raspberry glitter punch concoction to be mixed when a voice cuts through the music, close to his ear, and makes him freeze.  
  
“Can I get you one?”  
  
He stiffens, lets out a breath and trains his voice to steady.  
  
“Nah, I think I’ve got it covered, thanks.” He leans on his elbow as Jensen come into view beside him. “Got a bona-fide ID now and everything.”  
  
Jensen’s rumbling laugh surprises him for some reason and he lifts an eyebrow teasingly. “Well yeah, but do you know the owners?”  
  
The bartender comes over with Sandy’s drink and slides a beer in front of Jensen even though Jared hasn’t seen him signal for anything at all yet. Jensen nods his thanks as Jared digs into his back pocket for bills.  
  
“Ah, I heard it was owned by one of those Ackles boys. Real ragtag bunch; I’m wary.”  
  
The bartender waves off the twenty that Jared offers him and nods down the bar to where Steve is busy pouring shots for a group of college kids. “Friends of the boss men drink free, kid. House rules.”  
  
Under normal circumstances, Jared would have insisted the guy take his money purely on principle. And stop calling him “kid” while he was fucking at it. But Jensen’s still feigning nonchalance beside him and Jared really can’t muster the extra energy it would take to outline all the ways in which he’s very much not been friends with these people for quite a while now.  
  
Instead he rolls his eyes discreetly, smiling tightly at the bartender and shoving the money back into his pocket.  
  
“You might wanna tell your brother that free drinks to all acquaintances ain’t really the best business plan.”  
  
Jensen either doesn’t take the jibe seriously or is far better at acting than Jared remembers. “We almost had to have my dad committed,” Jensen says instead, lifting the beer to his lips.  
  
“Yeah, so I heard.”  
  
Jensen shoots him a sidelong glance, smirks; they’re still facing forward, keeping their exchanges to little glimpses. Jared can play along; he likes it better this way anyway. They should work their way up to eye contact.  
  
“You been terrorizing Addie already?”  
  
Jared laughs unexpectedly and sees Jensen smile out of his peripheral. “The day anyone manages to terrorize your grandma is the day Crazy Larry and I do a naked tango through town hall.”  
  
They fall silent, Jensen sipping his beer as Jared pushes one of the bottles into line with the tip of his finger, just for something to do.  
  
There was a time, not even so long ago, when Jared didn’t think to censor one thing that he said to this man. Words were conceived and mulled and spun out in the same breath, spilled right between them—laughed at over beers, penned on notes stuck to fridge doors. Breathed into each other’s mouths too early in the morning or too late at night, face to face, sharing air, and for a moment Jared aches to remember them. And then, just as quick, he remembers that whoever said that words are the best weapon was a bullshit liar.  
  
Words are just words. Jared can think of a thousand things that they can never do justice.  
  
“She looks good,” Jared says breezily, and Jensen sighs softly, leaning forward so both his elbows are resting against the bar and the beer dangles loosely from his fingers.  
  
“Yeah, she’s a tough old bird,” he says, but it seems distant and Jared thinks that maybe there’s something off…but the bar’s pretty loud and Jensen’s still not looking Jared in the eye, so he can’t be sure.  
  
Jared lets his eyes linger on his profile for a second while Jensen’s not looking. He looks the same. For some reason, his face infuriates Jared.  
  
He pulls his eyes away and looks towards the stained bar instead. Clears his throat.  
  
“Hey, about last night.” That gets his attention and Jensen’s fingers get twitchy on the bottle. Jared revels in it for a second before his chest tightens with childish shame. “It was stupid. It was childish and we’re not sixteen anymore.” He steadies his voice into something better, flicks his eyes up to catch Jensen watching him subtly in the mirror opposite the bar. “I’m not sixteen anymore.”  
  
Jensen looks, just a dart of his eyes sideways that no one would have picked up if they hadn’t been standing so close, watching for it. Jared sees it, though, running over the length of him and then settling on where his fingers are busy shredding the beer label.  
  
“No. You’re not.”  
  
A thick silence envelops them and Jared swallows thickly. Shrugs a shoulder and keeps at that soggy label.  
  
“The past is the past, right?” It sounded pretty good in his head and when he’d thought it over and practiced his delivery last night, laid stiff and itchy and bone tired on top of his bed. Now, it just sounds strung out and practiced. Like he doesn’t really believe a word he’s saying.  
  
“It is what it is; we ain’t changing it now. We can leave it there, for a couple of weeks.” He lifts his eyes to catch Jensen’s in the mirror. For some reason, watching him is easier like that. More distanced, even though they’re standing right next to each other. The same kind of safety children get when they cover their eyes and make themselves invisible. “For Danni.”  
  
Jensen shrugs, finally dragging his eyes from his beer bottle to meet Jared’s in the mirror and then dropping away. He turns to lean back against the bar and lifts the beer to his lips.  
  
“Yup,” is all he says, and Jared gathers it as a win.  
  
“Good.”  
  
Jensen sure as hell doesn’t look like he believes it. Let the charade play on, Jared thinks childishly.  
  
Only two weeks til curtain.  


  


:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::  


  


“So this big show of yours is in three weeks?”  
  
Turns out leaving the past in the past is relatively easy once you’ve digested multiple wine coolers, an undisclosed number of tequila chasers, and the equivalent of three kegs of beer.  
  
Jared reclines in the porch swing and rests his half empty bottle against his thigh. Beside him, Sophia’s rocking the swing to and fro with the tips of her bare toes against the railing.  
  
“Yup.”  
  
“Ten days after my wedding?” Danneel is leaning heavily into Tom’s side on the porch steps.  
  
Jared nods his head. “Correct.”  
  
“And are all these blank white canvases some weird artist’s prerogative or…”  
  
“They aren’t finished.”  
  
“Or started,” Chad adds from behind the swing, his fingers twirling Sophia’s dark hair.  
  
“And I’m not worried at _all_ ,” Sophia pipes up.  
  
Jared smirks at Sophia’s raised eyebrows and pokes her in the side. “It’s a _process_.” A united groan rings out across the porch.  
  
“Oh, I forgot about the _process_.” Jensen grins lazily, lifting his own beer to his lips.  
  
Danni smiles wistfully. “Hey, do you still have that ratty old hockey jersey?”  
  
Jared frowns, thinks that maybe if he was sober, he would feign offense. “No.”  
  
He does, actually. It’s lying somewhere near his hamper back in New York, still with the giant green stain on the hem, still with a hole in the right sleeve from that time he learned not to get a turpentine-splattered shirt too close to a barbecue.  
  
“Do you still get pissy when you get painter’s block?”  
  
Jared frowns at Sandy and narrows his eyes. “I don’t get _pissy_.” Another united groan makes his frown deepen.  
  
“Oh, please!” Chad cries. “You are such a fucking princess. The only thing that calmed you down was when Jen locked you in a room and fucked the sh…” He trails off, suddenly aware of what he’s saying as an awkward silence falls stiffly over the group.  
  
Jared keeps his stare locked on the depths of his beer bottle until Sophia leans over him.  
  
“Hey, I know I said this commission was important,” she says, her voice low and serious, “but I really don’t think that’s in my job description.”  
  
Jared looks at her through narrowed eyes as the tension cracks.  
  
Danni and Tom laugh out loud at Sophia’s genuinely worried stare and Chad tuts his disapproval and tugs Sophia back against himself.  
  
Jared smiles tightly and downs the rest of his beer in two long drags, pretending his throat isn’t suddenly trying to suffocate him.  
  
Pretending he can’t see Jensen staring at him from across the deck.  
  
  
  


:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

  
  
  
 _  
“It’s the first week of summer,” Sandy says matter-of-factly. “Beach party at the house.”  
  
The house, Jared discovers, is a three-storey renovation that sits on the verge of the coast of Chandler Grove. A dirt track leads right down to the ocean and a tiny pier where the McCoys house their sailboats. The pier is one of Jared’s favorite parts of the whole house. He sits on the scratchy wooden planks for hours and hours and watches the ocean, sketching the boats and the landscapes that he can see from the shelter of the cove.  
  
“You know you’re going to mould yourself to this wood eventually?” Jared looks up from the sketchpad resting against his knees to find Jensen coming towards him with a fond little smile on his lips.  
  
Jared nods in greeting as Jensen sits beside him. “Where is everyone?”  
  
Jensen leans back on his hands, skimming his feet along the surface of the water. “Gone to the store, and trying to talk Misha’s uncle into scoring us some beer.”  
  
Term has officially ended. The summer’s starting. Jared has survived one full year at Charlton; he thinks that’s reason enough to celebrate.  
  
Jensen leans over to peer at Jared’s sketch—a trawler boat making its way out of the harbor. His lips twitch before he returns to his reclining position, says nothing.  
  
Jared doesn’t really know where he stands with Jensen. They share lunches and play pranks on Chad and spend weekends holed up in the Ackleses’ pool house playing PlayStation, but he probably knows less about him than he knows about any of his newfound friends.  
  
“So have you invited anyone tonight?” Jensen asks casually, gazing out into the distance. Jared looks up from his shading to shoot him a puzzled look. That’s another thing about the riddle that is Jensen—the offhand comments. He asks weird questions that never seem to lead anywhere and gives Jared little looks that he can never quite place.  
  
“No. Why?”  
  
Jensen shrugs, but Jared sees the shadow of a thoughtful smile playing at his lips, like the one he gets sometimes when he’s studying quadratic equations.  
  
“No reason.”  
  
Jared’s still looking at him weirdly when Jensen abruptly leans in and presses their lips together.  
  
It seems like a pretty big reason to Jared. But what the hell does he know, anyway?  
_  
  
:::::  
  
  
Jared’s got the outline of a trawler boat half-sketched onto a canvas when a sound startles him and he snaps his gaze towards the doorway.  
  
Jensen’s leant up against the frame of the open door, sunglasses pushed up into his ruffled hair that looks like it did when he used to wake up and only run his fingers through it before leaving the house. He’s trim, wearing jeans and a t-shirt and flip flops, and Jared’s gut clenches before he can get it under control. This is the Jensen he remembers as opposed to the one in tailored suits and Windsor knots who seems to have replaced him.  
  
“Déjà vu,” Jensen mutters, and Jared pretends he doesn’t hear the hazy nostalgia in his tone as he slides the canvas off his lap, leans it up against the window seat, and tries not to sound accusing.  
  
“What are you doing here?”  
  
A set of car keys dangle from his fingers, jingling in explanation. “We’ve been summoned.”  
  
  


  
[ ](http://tinypic.com/?ref=1zbrm7d)   


  
  
  
Jared presses himself against the passenger side in Jensen’s truck as they wind their way downtown.  
  
They’ve been summoned, apparently, for roadie duty. Kane has a show tonight and once Steve and Josh got wind of another pair of strong and not so willing hands in town to help lug speakers and tape stereo wires to the floor, they jumped at the opportunity to wrangle them.  
  
The bar is located right smack in the middle of the strip of cafes and taverns that make up Rhylee’s Main Street. Jeff used to call it the heart of Rhylee. Jared remembers being sixteen—too young to serve anything stronger than a Coca Cola, but tall enough to collect glasses and lug beer barrels without drawing attention to himself—his apron pockets full of tips that Jeff pushed into his hands at the end of every shift.  
  
“Your pretty little face that keep ‘em comin’ back, kid,” he used to joke.  
  
Jared knows it wasn’t that at all. His mother had worn the same kind of apron for Jeff once upon a time. He’d push tips at her too, Jared remembers. _“It’s your pretty face that keeps ‘em comin’ back, darlin’.”_  
  
History’s a funny thing, Jared thinks.  
  
The drive is kind of awkward, propelled by the fact that they’re sitting in the very same truck that Jared’s sat in a thousand times before; the truck that Jared learned to drive in, the truck that chauffeured them all on a handful of road trips, the truck that staged his first blowjob.  
  
 _History indeed._ Jated thinks.  
  
Jensen alternates between making mindless small talk about his work, or the town, or his brother’s antics, and tweaking the radio station.  
  
“So you made any progress with your stuff?”  
  
Jared stares out the window as Kinsey Street flies past and wonders if Alona still lives here.  
  
“Truth?” Jared says distractedly, and it takes a second for him to register exactly what’s tumbled out of his mouth. Jensen smiles fondly around a gruff laugh. “Yeah, okay,” he says, a hint of challenge. “Truth.”  
  
Jared smiles to himself and looks back out the window. “Not really.”  
  
In their game, _not really means no not at all and it’s getting pretty scary._ The thing about the game is, you have to read between the lines and pick out the best bits—the bits that aren’t said. Those are the only honest truths anyone ever divulges willingly. It’s why only a select few can really play; not a lot of people get the rules. Jensen always did, though.  
  
Jensen had always been Jared’s strongest contender.  
  
Jensen settles on a soft rock station and looks at Jared when they stop at a light. “Nah, you’ll get it,” he says breezily. “You always did work better pinned to a wall.”  
  
The car falls silent at the double meaning, Jared’s gaze instinctively shifting to the side of Jensen’s face. He watches it turn a soft shade of pink before the light changes and the car rolls on. Jared stares at him for a second more before returning his gaze to the window.  
  
It hadn’t really occurred to him before now that regardless of everything else, this guy knows him, probably better than most other people in Jared’s life. Jensen knows things about him that Jared hasn’t told anyone else; things that he probably never will, if he’s smart enough.  
  
Nothing good ever comes from full disclosure. Truths are far more dangerous than dares.  
  
They’d all figured that out a long time ago.  
  
:::::  
  
  
Kane’s looks different in the daylight. Different without the pounding music and the bustle of bodies and the smell of sweat and beer and nacho cheese. Different than J.D.’s ever did.  
  
Chris greets them with a beer that Jared has little choice to accept because by God, “It’s noon, somewhere, son.” Josh and Steve trickle down from upstairs and Josh stares at Jared standing by a pile of knotted wires with a beer his hand.  
  
“Jesus Christ,” he drawls, his familiar joker grin more watered down than Jared remembers. “Either I’m still wasted off ‘a last night or Jared Padalecki is standing in my bar!”  
  
“You are still wasted off of last night,” Jensen retorts immediately, but Josh waves him off and jumps the bar divide in a neat hurdle that transcends the hangover that’s got to be weighing on his senses. Jensen has the same alcohol tolerance as his brother, no doubt.  
  
“Good to see you, kiddo.” Jared’s smothered by overeager arms before he can shove him off and Josh thwacks him hard on the shoulder as he pulls back, ruffling a hand through his hair in a way that makes Jared feel fifteen again. “Now get to work, jackass. We ain’t payin’ you to stand round and look pretty.”  
  
“You ain’t payin’ me at all,” Jared mutters petulantly, sounding all of fifteen. Josh just raises an eyebrow and wanders off to retrieve flyers and paintbrushes from Chris’s arms. “That’s our beer you’re drinkin’, ain’t it?”  
  
It is. Jared’s on his third when Josh slides onto a stool next to him an hour later and uncaps his own Bud.  
  
“It’s nice to do this as a law abiding citizen, ain’t it?” he drawls as Chris and Jensen argue loudly on the other side of the room over the best way to secure the leads to the floor.  
  
Jared shrugs and takes a sip. “I dunno. Makes it kind of boring.” Josh laughs and Jared studies him out of the corner of his eye. “It suits you though,” he says truthfully, “this place.”  
  
Josh hums and raises a mocking eyebrow. “Better than Ackles Oil Inc. Headquarters?”  
  
“Much better,” Jared agrees, and the pauses thoughtfully. “Although I do hear Ackles Inc. employees get pretty sweet Cowboys seats.”  
  
“I dunno, man,” Josh says, leaning forward on his elbows and dropping his voice in a way that Jared knows precedes a drunken confession. “I would have suffocated if I didn’t get out. I had to do it.”  
  
He didn’t have to. He wanted to, and he had every right to, but leaving has always been his choice. Looking back, Jared doesn’t even think it should have been a shock. If he thinks hard enough, he can remember Josh in a suit and a tie, but it seems utterly absurd now. It had seemed absurd at the time, too, when the twenty-one year old protégé had handed his father his notice along with his Princeton diploma and scared everyone half to death.  
  
Rhylee rarely welcomes change; the Ackleses had never even pondered it. Joshua Ackles was born to run Ackles Incorporated, and that was the only story anyone had ever known. Until it wasn’t.  
  
Then again, Jared knows better than anyone the way life can turn around and push you out on your ass.  
  
“I keep telling him he needs to loosen the knot on that fucking tie before it’s too late,” Josh is saying, pulling Jared back to the present. Jared follows Josh’s gaze towards where the argument is being resolved with offensive hand gestures and vulgar curses. “I’m sick of telling him all the ways he should tell the old man to stick it.”  
  
Jared knows Jensen; knows him probably better than most people in his life. He doesn’t know exactly how many people Jensen’s told his secrets to since; he can’t even be certain anymore how much of what he thinks he knows himself is a lie. But he knows exactly why Josh is wasting his breath.  
  
Maybe that means Jared still knows Jensen better than his own brother does. Maybe it just means that Josh has never been very good at playing Truth.  
  
But really, the only truth Jared gets from it all is that Jensen is still Jensen.  
  
He doesn’t know whether the revelation makes him relieved or nauseated.  
  
  
:::::  
  
  
The sun shines bright and hot on Jared where he sits on the dock with a sketch pad resting precariously on his lap. There’s a tray of watercolors beside his thigh and aquamarine splatters on his forearms and thighs.  
  
He hasn’t used watercolors in years, but when he saw them in the window of one of the art stores near the marina, something had tugged him inside to buy them. Maybe they’ll rekindle some passion in him and force him to put paint to paper in artistic genius.  
  
They remind him of being a kid. Watercolors were his finger paints, once upon a time. Addie still has some of his old fruit bowls and flower pots stashed away in drawers and dressers. He saw a familiar lopsided pear-and-apple combo from years back propped up against one of her vases when he visited yesterday. She might be a tough old bird, but Adelaide Ackles is a sucker for sentiment.  
  
“I’m pathetically relieved to see a paintbrush in your hand, honey, but I would far rather it be on a canvas.”  
  
Jared smiles down at the nondescript ocean scene developing on his lap and doesn’t need to look to place the familiar voice. Sophia eases herself down beside him and dips her bare toes in the water.  
  
“I’ve got to say, Jared.” She leans back on her hands, stretching her body out so the exposed skin not hidden by her sundress is licked by the sun. “I think you majorly undersold this town of yours. It’s pretty amazing.”  
  
“You have tourist syndrome,” Jared replies wryly as a line of blue runs seamlessly into a line of green and makes an unattractive splodge where he really doesn’t want one. Doesn’t matter much, though; a Monet, this piece isn’t. “Give it about eighteen years and the sentiment will start to wear thin.”  
  
“Eighteen years,” Sophia sighs. “I couldn’t imagine staying in one place for eighteen years.”  
  
Sophia’s moved around a lot. Her father was a salesman and her mother was a curator specializing in foreign artifacts and art pieces. When they separated, Sophia was passed between them, resulting in weekends spent in a different state and summers in Europe while her mother dealt with Parisian galleries. Her resume is pretty impressive, from what Jared can gather. He never really understood why she’d settled in New York, but something has kept her there for the last four years.  
  
“I couldn’t imagine it either,” Jared says. “Ergo, I left.”  
  
“Did you always want to leave?” she asks, not probing but mildly curious.  
  
Jared remembers the tickle of his mother’s hair against his cheek when she sat on the hill overlooking the town and pointed out his future.  
  
At seven years old, getting out of Rhylee had been a challenge. At seventeen, it had been about survival. Everything that happened in between was just history. It was the way it was. You can’t change the past, but the past can change you. It’s one of life’s unfair advantages.  
  
“Yeah, I guess,” Jared says, but it’s a lie. He hadn’t always wanted to. He had planned for it, thought about it; maybe pondered the idea in an abstract way his whole adolescence, but he’d never felt like he had to claw and elbow his way out of town. Never. Except that’s exactly what he’s done.  
  
Luckily, Sophia isn’t as good as Sandy as calling his bluff. “Is that why you never came back?”  
  
He shrugs. “I dunno. Maybe.”  
  
At first, he hadn’t come back because he’d felt like he would die if he did. Then he hadn’t come back because he’d been way too busy trying to manufacture dreams he’d never really had. Now, he realizes, he just hadn’t come back because he was scared of what he’d be coming back to. Anyone can go home again; to say otherwise is a lie. Rhylee was never the problem, really. It was just the excuse.  
  
Jared doesn’t say that, though, mainly because he can’t quite seem to erect another façade for himself to play along with, and Sophia lets a couple of minutes of silence engulf them before she turns to him worriedly.  
  
“This is a piece of crap,” Jared says finally, primarily to break the silence but also because he feels like he owes her at least one truth this morning.  
  
They look down at his half-finished watercolor with bothered frowns.  
  
Sophia stretches and tilts her face towards the sun. “Well, it would have been unprofessional of me to tell you.”  
  
:::::  
  
 _  
The summer heat shifts into cooler breezes and the campfire crackles of in front of them.  
  
“Okay, so it’s time for our biannual nighttime disclosure session,” Misha announces from where he’s sprawled across the sand, his limbs moving sluggishly like they’re in water. It’s likely the sugary s’mores that have worn him out; Jared hasn’t ever seen him knocked on his ass from alcohol.  
  
“In honor of the completion of our junior year and the inevitable question…” Misha drags himself into a seated position and folds his hands neatly on top of his knees. “Miss McCoy. Your senior year is fast approaching; have you given any thought to colleges yet?”  
  
His Ms Burrows impression is actually quite impressive, and Jared feels the vibration of Jensen’s laughter against his back.  
  
Sandy laughs too and waves a dismissive hand through the air. “Well, Ms Burrows, I have, actually. It’s hard not to, being a McCoy and all.” She raises her voice loftily. “My father went to Yale, don’t you know?”  
  
Misha raises a falsely impressed eyebrow. “Yale, you say?”  
  
Sandy hums, her lips twitching in amusement. Everyone in Rhylee knows that Stanley McCoy went to Yale. He still murmurs Light and Truth under his breath for momentum and spray paints bulldogs on his driveway during football season.  
  
There hasn’t ever been any doubt as to what school his only daughter will be attending come graduation. Jared won’t guess how many wings have been donated over the years to make her integration as smooth as possible.  
  
Luckily, it has a pretty impressive English department.  
  
“And you, Mr Ackles?”  
  
Jared feels Jensen shift behind him and the hand that’s slung over Jared’s shoulder starts fiddling with the zipper on his hoodie. “Well, Ms Burrows…” Misha nods seriously, his face schooled into character. “As you know, I was planning on attending UCLA next fall and becoming a renowned and classically trained actor.”  
  
Misha hums his interest and nods in a “go on” gesture. “But, after my brother dropped out of Princeton six weeks short of graduation, handed in his notice as CEO of Ackles Enterprises to join a country rock band, and was subsequently disowned by my father…my senior year is a little up in the air at the moment.”  
  
Misha nods in exaggerated understanding. “Hmm, yes, good…and Jared?” He turns his attention to Jared, who’s smirking in amusement. “What does the future hold for the Andy Warhol brain child of East Texas?”  
  
Jared chuckles as Jensen’s fingers playing with his hoodie travel down and find the tender spot between his ribs.  
  
“Fine Arts, right?” Jensen’s saying, hot in his ear; that’s generally been the plan. Sandy is going to Yale, one of the Ackles boys is taking over the family business, and Jared is going to study Fine Arts, no matter what the cost.  
  
Jared Padalecki is going to be an artist. And Chicago is the place to do it.  
  
Jared squirms the fingers loose from his side and they settle around his middle instead as Misha moves on to Chad and the group shifts focus.  
  
Jared slots their fingers together and smiles at the tiny hum of contentment the ruffles his hair as he settles back, warm and sated and lazy, against Jensen’s chest. Chicago is all well and good, but Jared is learning that he can probably be an artist anywhere.  
  
East Texas is starting to look as good as anywhere else.  
  
_  


:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

  
  
  
Jared turns up at the Playhouse earlier than he’d said he would, due in large part to being kind of giddy at the prospect of seeing it again. Not that he’d ever admit to it.  
  
It’s a 1940s movie theatre that was renovated into a community centre in the late eighties. It sits between the very edge of Chandler Cove and Highway 35, equidistant from Lexington North and Leighton South in a weird twist of poetic geographical irony, considering it’s one of the only places in Rhylee that you can walk into on any given weekend and find at least one kid from every neighborhood in the same room.  
  
Jared lingers on the sidewalk for a second, the sea breeze ruffling his hair as he stares up at the building in front of him.  
  
It isn’t a particularly attractive building, all red brick and dark windows. The renovators kept the old marquee above the doors, but now instead of it flashing The Blob or Jaws in obnoxious LED lights, the board simply reads Rhylee Playhouse in plain, slightly crooked black stencil. Posters and leaflets are plastered all over the windows and doors, promoting yoga and Lamar’s classes and book clubs and bridge tournaments.  
  
The Playhouse is a pretty misleading name, Jared realizes, to anyone who isn’t a Rhylee local, considering the plays are only a small part of what the community centre promotes.  
  
His lips twitch as a smiley blonde teen suddenly appears in front of him and thrusts a leaflet at him from the pile she’s clutching in her hands.  
  
“RPH summer production, don’t miss it!” She grins, practiced and easy, breezing off down the boardwalk before Jared can respond.  
  
He looks down at the leaflet clutched in his hands. Rhylee Playhouse Summer Production Presents, declares the artistic black scrawl, and he can’t help but laugh out loud at the title standing proudly underneath. He fists the paper tight in his hand and lifts his head to look over the familiar building again.  
  
Drama might be only a small part of the centre, but it’s indisputably the most important. Jared likes that some things never change.  
  
The leaflet’s still clutched in his hand as he wanders up the steps and inside, his feet leading him on instinct towards the large red double doors at the back of the lobby.  
  
Back when it was torn apart and renovated, the building only kept one of the original three theaters, turning the rest of the space into rec rooms and gardens. It was in this theatre that the centre housed the town’s Halloween Movie Marathon, the weekend drama school, and, of course, the annual summer play that gave the centre its name.  
  
Jared spent his summers in this theatre once upon a time. Whole weekends spent painting and laughing and running lines. Whole days spent sprawled out in the back row seats, listening to his friends shout and scream and agonize about whatever tragedy was on the paper in front of them.  
  
“Oh! it is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't.…”  
  
Jared lingers at the top of the stairs, a hundred empty seats tiered down in front of him, looking to where a scrawny looking kid is clutching a script and uncertainly trying to project his voice. Around him, kids are littered across the stage with cardboard cutouts and paints and sewing machines, yelling and laughing over each other.  
  
“That’s good, Zach, real good,” someone calls over the ruckus, and Jared scans the seats to find the speaker sitting in one of the middle rows halfway down, “but let’s try it again, this time maybe without the sense of foreboding, huh? You’re the lead, dude; if you’re unsure, we’re unsure!”  
  
Jared smirks, skipping down the stairs and stopping in line with the middle row, watching Jensen look up from his notes and catch sight of him. He grins and yells out to stop Zach’s next line in its tracks:  
  
“Hey Zach, why don’t you take five, huh? Run lines, eat lunch; loosen up a little.”  
  
Zach nods despondently and slouches off stage as Jensen shucks his notes onto the chair beside him and shuffles along the row, stopping in front of Jared, who holds up the leaflet still clutched in his hand.  
  
“The Importance of Being Earnest?” Jared says dubiously, arching his eyebrows when Jensen throws his head back and laughs.  
  
“Well last time I checked, it’s a comedy, ain’t it?”  
  
Jared’s about to retort in kind when a sharp whistle shrills across the seats from the stage and they look down to see Sandy and Danneel waving at them from just offstage.  
  
“We ain’t paying you to stand around and harass our director, Picasso!” Danneel yells, pointedly thrusting out her hip as she waves her hand that isn’t clutching a stack of top hats in an attempt to beckon Jared closer.  
  
“You ain’t payin’ me at all!” Jared yells back, but he can feel the first stirrings of giddy excitement already twisting in his gut.  
  
Jared is no stranger to theatres anymore. He’s been to Broadway; he can see the flashing lights from his bedroom window back home, if he stares hard enough. He’s sat in more theatres and watched more shows in the last five years than probably anyone else in this whole town.  
  
But none of them managed to thrill him the way this place does.  
  
None of them even came close.  
  
:::::  
  
 _  
“So this is your mom, huh?”  
  
The week after she died, Jared had lived here. Curled up on the wooden bench on the edge of the path, sat in the dewy grass that stained all of his ratty old jeans to ruin, draped himself over the shiny polished stone that didn’t resemble his mother in the slightest. It had worried his father sick to the point that he had forcibly dragged him away; told him he couldn’t spend his whole life idling in a graveyard. It wasn’t what she would have wanted.  
  
It wasn’t going to bring her back.  
  
“Yeah.” Jared nods towards the timeworn stone and feels the same dull throb in his stomach that he did when he was eleven. “This is her.”  
  
Jensen angles his face up to where the sun is peeking through the knots and twists of tree branches, leaves falling on their path in patchwork bursts.  
  
“She’s got a good location,” he says agreeably, and Jared watches the hazy sunshine dance across his upturned face, golden freckles duller now that autumn’s coming to wipe out their golden summer glows.  
  
“It’s all about locale.” Jared drops his chin to his chest and grins at Misha’s matter-of-fact tone. “I mean, this is prime real estate, right here.”  
  
Danni frowns at them from where she’s stretched out on one of the benches, trying to soak up some of the dying afternoon sun. “Is there such a thing as prime real estate in a cemetery?”  
  
She sounds part doubtful, part curious. Sandy just looks horrified.  
  
“Sure you can,” Misha replies, gesturing around at the grass they’re standing on. “Perfect distance from the sprinkler system.” Up at the trees above their heads; “Perfect ratio of midday shade to afternoon sun.” He jerks his head towards the bench that Danni’s occupying. “Private seating.”  
  
He nods knowingly and the others stare at him blankly. Chad even goes so far as to cluck his tongue disapprovingly.  
  
Misha shrugs, unfazed. “Whatever,” he says, turning and dropping with flourish beside Danni’s feet. “Edgar J. Mowler knows what I’m talking about.”  
  
Sandy frowns at him. “Who?”  
  
Misha raises his eyebrows knowingly and inclines his head towards a particularly decrepit concrete headstone nestled in a shadowed corner of overgrowth behind the benches. The name has almost faded completely, and the dates are obscured by the moss and weeds climbing the ancient stone.  
  
Sandy scoffs, shaking her head in disdain as she turns her gaze back to the newer marble in front of her. She crosses her legs under her and reaches out to bat at the grass around the edge of the grave.  
  
“It is peaceful here, though,” she relents before her expression morphs into something like regret. “Considering.”  
  
Jared smiles anyway, nodding in agreement. It is, for the most part. It’s part of the reason Jared liked it so much back then. The quiet, the breeze; the view. It’s almost like it was before. Before chemo, before the tears and the hospitals and the bills and the work. Just the two of them, sitting in the sunshine, talking about nothing at all.  
  
“What was she like?” Sandy asks then; Jared’s busy tracing the familiar grooves and lines in the stone with his eyes. “Your mom?”  
  
The lines explain that she was beloved. That she was a doting mother. A loving wife. An angel. And she was. She was all of those things.  
  
“She was a cleaner,” Jared says, not taking his eyes off the stone. Six words try to sum up everything she was. Everything she could have been. “She cleaned your house.”  
  
He couldn’t not say it, just in case she’s listening somewhere. Just in case she ever thought for one second that it was something he should have been ashamed of. She did it for them—for him. To give him everything. There’s no shame in that.  
  
Sandy smiles wistfully, her voice distant, her sight line following Jared’s to the stone. “I know,” she says, “I remember her. She was nice.”  
  
“I sometimes wonder what she thinks of me,” he hears himself say, feeling five pairs of eyes pin him. “My dad was away a lot. More than he is now. And it was just the two of us.” He swallows the lump in his throat, tears his eyes off the stone; looks down at the dewy grass dampening his sneakers. Almost feels a sixth pair of eyes on him, stern and chastising. “She really, really wanted me to go to Charlton. To be an artist.” He shrugs, lets out a heavy puff of air that ruffles his scruffy bangs as he lifts his head a little. “To be something.”  
  
The eyes all watch him silently with something that isn’t quite pity, and it’s Jensen who speaks first. Steps closer to him and curls their fingers loosely together.  
  
“Then I guess wherever she is, you’ve got yourself one proud momma.”  
  
Jared likes to think so.  
  
_  
  


:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

  
  
  
The beach is packed the next day when they pull into the sandy lot overlooking the shoreline. Coral Shore is one of the busiest and largest beaches on the coast with a pier full of carnival games and vendor stands on one end and the main marina on the other, the space in between filled with expensive seafood restaurants and tourist shops. And, of course, about two miles of white sandy beach and cresting blue waves perfect for water sporting.  
  
As a rule, the residents of Rhylee tend to avoid Coral Shore like the plague during the busy season. While Corpus Christi is the go-to place for spring breaks and out-of-towners, resident Texans often prefer the quieter seaside towns like Rhylee for summer breaks and school vacations. It results in June, July, and August being overrun by sugar-fueled children, hassled parents, and couples with cameras stopping you at every sidewalk for an impromptu photo shoot.  
  
“It’s not too bad,” Sophia says mildly, pulling her shades down over her eyes as they disembark the cars and take their first glances down at the sandy shoreline.  
  
It isn’t ideal, Jared wants to correct, but he did agree to this group get-together this morning when Sandy and Sophia united to make him cave under their twin bambi-eyed stares and promises of ice cream and malt shakes afterwards. Damn them and their wily ways.  
  
“Surf’s good,” Tom adds, his black hair ruffling in the sea breeze, and Jared pulls another one of the girls’ bags out of his trunk and hands it off to Danni. Apparently Tom is into water skiing, a revelation that Jared had little time to prepare for, and Danni wants a sun-kissed complexion worthy of a summer bride.  
  
Sandy had, of course, leapt at the opportunity for a group bonding session and Jared is pretty sure Chad is there only on the off chance that a large percentage of girls are going to be wearing bikinis and that Tom will quite possibly break something smashing head first into the pier.  
  
“And I will say this only once, ladies,” Danni announces as they maneuver the stone steps down from the lot and amble towards a clear area near the water. “Funky strap lines are no woman’s friend. My bridesmaid dresses are strapless and fabulous. Peeling and farmer’s tans will not be tolerated in my thousand dollar photo package, thank you kindly.”  
  
Jensen rolls his eyes as he helps Sophia hurdle the rickety stone steps in her wedge shoes; Chad is already halfway to the surf, yelling something about Tiki bars (or coconut bras; the surf’s pretty loud and Chad mumbles a lot).  
  
Considering that Jensen hates the beach on a good day, Jared’s pretty sure he came just to torture Jared with his low-slung board shorts and muscled bow legs, but in the name of their newly minted peace agreement, it would be pretty petty of Jared to bring that up now.  
  
They stake out some sand and drop their towels and deck chairs and beach bags on it before racing each other towards the surf; Jensen wins by a hair because he manages to pants Chad and pick up Sandy and toss her into Jared and Tom as though they were skittles. It’s almost, almost like old times, if Jared closes his eyes real tight and tries to shave six years off his withered soul.  
  
They’re lounging on the beach a while later, Danni rotating herself like a rotisserie chicken and Chad rubbing sunscreen into places on Sophia’s body that Jared’s pretty sure the sun will never see.  
  
“Hey, you’re lookin’ pretty pink there,” Jensen says, his eyes barely visible over the rim of his sunglasses; Jared glances back over his shoulder as the skin starts to tingle on his back. Jared doesn’t really burn. He has the type of skin that tends to soak up a bronze pretty easily. Jensen’s paler skin has always been more sensitive, and Jared remembers the pink dusting on his shoulders and nose that always marked the first week of summer. Jared could look up now and count every one of them, if he wanted to—if he leant in closer to where Jensen is stretched out on one of the deck chairs, his face tilted towards the sun as he watches the others splash in the surf. “Maybe you should get Murray to give you hand when he’s done with Soph; I’m pretty sure the happy ending’s optional.”  
  
Jared smirks, turning onto his side on his towel and flipping the bridal magazine that he’d swiped from Danni’s bag shut.  
  
“I think I’ll just burn, thanks.”  
  
Jensen chuckles, his muscles rippling as he shifts, kicking his legs out into the sand in front of him and returning his focus to the water. “Suit yourself,” he says, “but don’t expect me to be the one to rub aloe on your whiny ass.”  
  
The fact that Jared doesn’t burn easily means that when he does, he’s a pretty big girl about it. Once when they were kids, Jared had burnt during a trip down the coast on Sandy’s parents’ boat. He’d bitched and whined all night in their cabin until Jensen had finally snapped, stripping him out of his clothes and rubbing lotion on every inch of skin until he was so slippery and slick he could barely stay on the bed. Of course, they’d tried very hard to test such a theory extensively, finally just fucking on the floor, if Jared recalls correctly.  
  
“I won’t be requiring any of your lotioning services either, thank you,” Jared replies, Jensen’s lips twitching at the same memory.  
  
“Okay, men.” Tom jogs up, dripping cold water onto Jared’s back as he stands over them and shakes out his hair. “Time for sports.”  
  
Tom claps his hands and Jared shoots a dubious look over at Jensen, who shows no signs of moving. Chad groans loudly and the hopeful expression falls off Tom’s face, his hands dropping to his sides. “No sports?”  
  
“Dude, these men you’re talking about consist of a guy who hates the beach with a passion that can’t be measured, a bean pole who’s about as coordinated as a house plant, and me—and dude, don’t let these blond-tipped good looks fool you. I’m pretty fragile. I bruise like a peach.” Chad slides his sunglasses down his nose and levels a glare at Tom over the rims. “For serious.”  
  
Jared coughs a laugh, hopping up onto his feet and dusting the sand off his shorts. “I’ll go with you,” he says, slapping a grateful-looking Tom on the shoulder as Tom grabs up his towel and flip flops and goes to listen to his fiancé’s safety speech. “Apparently I’m done for the day.”  
  
Jared hadn’t ever known Tom that well. He was a year ahead of them at school and a year below Chris and Josh. In high school, he was their quarterback and he shared Jared and Sandy’s AP Bio class before he graduated and moved out of state for college. Jared had almost fallen down stupid when he’d slipped Danni’s invite out of its fancy envelope and seen Tom John Patrick Welling’s name engraved in full along side hers.  
  
Chad had told him he’d moved back to Texas after graduating from med school. It shouldn’t have been a huge leap, going from high school jock to campus hero to plastic surgeon. It’s not even much of a shock that Danni would go for someone exactly like him, now that Jared thinks about it. Jared’s finding it hard to be shocked by much these days.  
  
“I really appreciate you coming to this thing, man,” Tom says as they trudge through the sand and dodge dripping kids and flying Frisbees on their way to the end of the beach that houses the sports shacks. “It really means a lot to Danni.”  
  
Jared glances at him to make sure that he looks as sincere as he sounds, because as little as he knows about Tom Welling, he’s pretty sure Tom knows less about him. Jared swung with a good crowd at Charlton, but he was never exactly popular. Tom Welling had his golden boy status bronzed by the time Jared walked into Charlton and Jared was long gone by the time he’d come back to re-claim it. But somewhere along the way, Danneel Harris had gone and fallen in love with him. That had to count for something in Jared’s book.  
  
“Yeah man,” Jared says easily. “It was no trouble.” That’s a lie, but the beauty of not really knowing someone is that you can lie to their face and not really care about it.  
  
“No, dude. I know it was pretty last minute and you’re a big deal, right? With your art and stuff.”  
  
“It was pretty short notice, now that you mention it,” Jared says. “What’s with that? You knock her up or something?”  
  
Tom laughs abruptly. “No!” He shifts a little and yeah, Jared doesn’t know him from Adam, but he knows discomfort when he sees it. His interest piques suddenly. “She wanted it quick, what can I say? I’m whipped.”  
  
“I don’t need to know about ya’ll’s bedroom kinks.”  
  
They come to a stop at one of the surfing shacks and lean up against the bar to wait for someone to tend to them. Jared looks over at him perplexedly. “How do you know about my art and stuff?”  
  
Tom glances over from reading the price board with a frown. “Huh?”  
  
“You said I’m a big deal ‘cause of my art and stuff. How do you know about my show? Did Danni look it up or something?”  
  
He’s kind of surprised when Tom laughs and shakes his head. His ruffled locks tousle slightly and for a second, Jared can see what might have swayed Danni in that direction. “Dude, they all look them up.” Tom catches Jared’s confused stare and his grin tilts down a little at the corners. “What?”  
  
Jared shakes his head and Tom looks unsettled for a second before turning back to the board. “So you any good at any of this?”  
  
Jared’s about to reveal that he’d actually just walked over here with him for moral support when a familiar voice cuts off any reply he might have had.  
  
“He does a mean belly flop off a body board, if I recall.”  
  
Jared looks over to find Misha Collins inside the booth, a wetsuit pulled down below his torso and puka shells lying in a neat circle around his neck. He grins. “I was starting to think you were a hallucination, J. T. Padalecki.”  
  
Jared grins back. “You still having those?”  
  
“Yeah, they’re starting to get real trippy; I might have to double my medical marijuana prescription.”  
  
Jared laughs out loud and Tom looks between them in confusion. “You two know each other?”  
  
“Know each other?” Misha cries, hopping the counter and lunging at Jared for an overeager bear hug. “We were soul mates back in the day!”  
  
Jared pats his back once he can breathe again and pulls back to admire the shack. “You work here?”  
  
“Sure do,” Misha announces, proudly gesturing down to his wetsuit. “Surf and sand til I die, baby cakes.”  
  
“Does surf and sand have an adequate pension plan?”  
  
Misha waves his hand dismissively and makes his way back behind the counter to take his place again. “Yeah; you get taken out on a surf board and tipped to the sharks.”  
  
“Saves on florists,” Jared says agreeably.  
  
Tom’s suited up and sent off on a rental and Jared’s propped on Misha’s counter watching him fumble his way through a beginner’s lesson when someone behind him snaps his attention away from the ocean.  
  
“Sorry dude,” the guy says, and Jared turns in time to see Justin Hartley arranging clipboards. He catches Jared’s wide-eyed stare and falters a little before he places him.  
  
“Oh…” Hartley puts the boards down and takes a step back, running his hands down his wetsuit-clad thighs nervously, “hey. Jared. It is Jared, right?”  
  
He knows exactly who it is. He isn’t being coy, just stupid, but then, that doesn’t shock Jared. The fact that he’s standing here in Misha’s shop, wearing a matching wetsuit and organizing his fucking clipboards, however, does.  
  
Jared doesn’t say anything, sliding off the counter, grabbing up his towel, and slinking off across the sand without a backwards glance towards the lot.  
  
Turns out some things can still shock Jared. He should have known better than to be so fucking naïve as to think otherwise.  
  
  


::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

  
  
  
He’s splashing paint across a canvas—violent, angry, bright colors against stark white. Two covered canvases are lying flat against the deck, drying in the sea breezes, and Jared’s so angry he’s vibrating with it. He came through the door an hour ago, still damp and warm from the beach, and beelined for the deck. Pacing had done nothing to calm his rapidly beating heart; his clenching fingers had grabbed the first thing that came to hand—a paintbrush—and he had been harshly jabbing it at a canvas since.  
  
He’s swiping his brush through a new pallet of blue when someone clears their throat behind him and Jared’s head swings around towards it immediately, eager for something else to vent on.  
  
Jensen leans against the door frame, still beach-dirty, arms crossed over the t-shirt covering his now freckled shoulders. Jared’s so fucking angry he could spit.  
  
“Your muse just couldn’t wait for us to pack up?” Jensen drawls sarcastically, quirking his eye towards the half-finished canvas and it’s just the opening Jared was waiting for.  
  
“You’re fucking unbelievable, you know that?” Jared shouts, flinging his arm out and spattering paint all over the white deck. Jared’s covered in it. There’s aqua all up his arms, under his fingernails, probably in his hair.  
  
Jensen’s eyes widen a little at the venom in his voice but Jared’s too far gone to give a damn. “You fucking walk back in here with your fucking devil may care attitude and do whatever the fuck you want and I’m fucking sick of it!”  
  
“What the hell are you talking about?”  
  
“I’m talking about you! You and your goddamn holier than thou attitude, walking around like nothing is wrong—like nothing ever fucking happened…”  
  
“Did something happen at the beach?” Jensen does look genuinely confused and takes a cautious step forward. “Did someone do something to you?”  
  
Jared scoffs, a harsh sound. “Like you fucking care…”  
  
“I care.”  
  
Jared turns on him, seeing red, remembers panic and dull, throbbing pain like someone is ripping his lungs out. “You lost the right to care when you lost the ability to keep your dick in your pants, Jensen!”  
  
Jensen clams up at that, his nostrils flaring and yeah, Jared’s hit a nerve. Good. Let it fucking burn.  
  
“You don’t know everything about that…”  
  
“I know enough,” Jared growls, turning his back and splattering some more paint.  
  
Jensen snorts condescendingly and lashes out: “Nothing’s changed, I see.”  
  
“Excuse me?”  
  
“I said nothing’s fucking changed, has it? Jared Padalecki, fucking wonder kid, thinking he knows everything… Well, you don’t, Jared, you don’t know everything.”  
  
“I know you fucked him,” Jared snaps. “I know you took him to the pool house and I bet you fucked him right there on the floor. I know you lied about it, and told our friends to lie about it—I know I had to hear about from Justin fucking Hartley outside the marina with half of Rhylee listening in!”  
  
“You were going to turn down that scholarship,” Jensen says quietly. “You were going to stay here and throw it all away, for what? For West Texas Art Institute and a part time job at Tasty D-Lite? I did you a fucking favor…”  
  
Jared gapes, his stomach falling right out. “You did me a favor? You think you did me a fucking favor?”  
  
He’s moving before he realizes it, darting forward and lashing out before his brain has time to catch up to reason. His fist nails Jensen right in the jaw and jerks his head to the side, the sound of flesh hitting flesh echoing out over the deck and blending with the crashes of the sea in the distance.  
  
They both pause, stunned for a second, staring each other down, Jared’s harsh breathing making his chest heave. Jensen’s shocked stare only makes his blood boil hotter as he wiggles his fingers, trying to take some comfort in the throbbing ache in his knuckles. Then he’s lunging forward again.  
  
Jensen meets him and their hands tug at each other, pulling each other in, fingers digging into sensitive skin and teeth clashing with the force of the kiss.  
  
Jared lips are urgent, insistent over Jensen’s, forceful little bites and tugs to open up Jensen’s mouth so he can plunge his tongue inside. Jensen’s hands are on his back, under his shirt, bunching the material in his fists to tug it up, baring Jared’s skin to the cool air. Jensen’s tongue meets his in a wet tangle and he rises up on his toes a little to push right back; a shiver jolts through Jared that he knows has nothing at all to do with the chill.  
  
“You broke my fucking heart, you spineless, fucking bastard!” Jared pants harshly between kisses.  
  
His hands slip down, under the waistband of Jensen’s loose shorts, and he digs his fingers into the soft flesh there. His shirt is up and over his head and he blinks, more than a little blindsided. Jensen’s staring at him, his chest heaving with shortness of breath.  
  
“I know I did.”  
  
The confession, as late as it is coming, makes something shift inside Jared. It’s more than he’d ever gotten in the way of a real apology, and Jensen’s looking at him like he means it. With that look that Jared remembers that says I know, and I love you, and I’m sorry, and Jared realizes what’s been eating at him all these years about it and it’s not only the hurt. It’s not only the lies and betrayal and the pride.  
  
It’s the fact that, above everything else, Jensen had been more than his boyfriend. More than just his lover.  
  
He’d been his friend.  
  
“I can never forgive you for it,” Jared says firmly, and in the moment, he means it, even though it’s pretty hard to take either of them seriously at that point, standing a foot apart on the deck with their lips red and swollen and spit-laced. Jared’s shirtless and Jensen’s board shorts are pushed low on his ass. Jensen can see it, though, and he flinches.  
  
“I know that too,” he whispers, and then Jared’s lunging for his mouth again, his hands tugging at his own shorts as Jensen’s slide up his paint-spattered arms and curl around his neck, pulling him in deeper.  
  
Jared can never forgive him. But he can forget, for a while.   


  


::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::  


  


Jared’s putting the finishing touches on his painting when Chad and Sophia get home, smelling of salt, still pink from the sun and trailing sand all over the floor all the way out to the deck.  
  
Jared hopes they didn’t notice the blue smudges on the couch cushions. He feels them pause behind him and imagines the glance that travels between them. He looks away from the painting, stands back to let them see. “What d’you think?”  
  
“Nice,” Sophia says. “Really nice, Jared.”  
  
He turns to Chad for a follow up, but he just squints slightly and looks dubious. “Where the hell did you go? Tom said you bolted again. Jesus, dude, you’re like a fucking colt.”  
  
Jared rolls his eyes, taking a step back to get a better view of the painting. “I saw Justin Hartley at Misha’s place,” he says.  
  
Jared dares a quick glance over his shoulder at their answering silence.  
  
Sophia frowns. “Who’s Justin Hartley?”  
  
“He’s the guy Jen shafted,” Chad supplies matter of factly, and Jared turns around fully to shoot him a cold glare.  
  
“Thanks for that, Chad.”  
  
Sophia blinks. “So that’s the…”  
  
“Yup.”  
  
“Well…” She falters and then gestures lamely at the canvas. “It seems to have helped you artistically.”  
  
Jared stares at the painting dully. “Hooray.”  
  
Chad’s still staring, his narrow eyes stony, and Sophia’s ascending to new levels of discomfort, flinging her hand out towards the kitchen as means of escape. “I’m just gonna…”  
  
Once she’s gone, Jared settles himself beside the erected canvas, leaning against the railing with his arms crossed protectively over his chest. Chad’s still staring.  
  
“What?”  
  
“I just hope you know what you’re doing, Jay,” he says seriously, and Jared’s hands drop away in confusion.  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
Chad raises an eyebrow in challenge. “The sudden burst of genius, the patent Padalecki emo shuffle— the poorly tidied couch cushions.” He drops his eyebrows, “Plus you’ve got a purple hand print on your ass and there’s a condom wrapper stuck to one of the lamp shades.”  
  
Jared deflates. “Oh,” he says, twisting to try and get a look at the offending article.  
  
“Just be careful, is all I’m saying.”  
  
Jared wants to tell him that he’s always careful, that not three weeks ago Chad was berating him to hell and back for being too damn careful, too anti-social, practically pushing him to get laid.  
  
So he and Jensen had sex. So what? It wasn’t the first time, and technically, they hadn’t had the freebie post-break-up one-time-only deal, so technically, Jared was just cashing in.  
  
“It’s two weeks, Chad,” Jared says instead, “and we’re grown-ups now, remember?”  
  
Chad doesn’t look convinced.  
  
“And hey,” Jared nods at the canvas and tries for a playful smirk, “at least it’s helping me artistically, right?”  
  
Jared doesn’t sound convinced either, but neither of them call each other on it. They just look at Jared’s painting for a while.  
  
It isn’t much yet, not nearly ready to hang, but it’s a start.  
  
It’s more than he’d had an hour ago.  
  


::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

  
  
  
 _  
They’re tangled in sheets, sticky and sated, the breeze from the open window cooling the sweat on their skin.  
  
“That was…different,” Jared pants as Jensen’s fingers trace abstract patterns on his thighs.  
  
“Different good? Or different bad?”  
  
“Different good,” Jared replies immediately, leaning over to catch Jensen’s lips in a wet kiss. “Different very, very good.”  
  
“Good.” Jensen laughs against his open mouth and then pulls back to look into his eyes. “Have I told you in the last ten minutes how proud I am of you?”  
  
“Hm, I think you maybe said something, but I couldn’t really make it out around my dick in your mouth.”  
  
“Well I am.” Jensen pulls back, kisses his nose, beams some more. “I mean, Chicago? The Chicago Institute of Fine Arts, Jay!”  
  
“Yeah, you know, about that.” Jensen pauses in his ministrations, his erratic hands resting gently on Jared’s shoulders. “I was thinking about applying to South Texas Institute for the Arts.”  
  
“What?” Jensen pushes himself up to stare down at him like he’s just admitted to wetting the bed. “Why?”  
  
Jared shrugs, tugs at the sheets; he’s not really comfortable with having this conversation naked and exposed, which is ridiculous considering what they’ve just spent the afternoon doing. “I dunno, I just want to keep my options open.”  
  
“There are no options!” Jensen’s voice has gotten high and he raises himself all the way up onto his knees. “It’s Chicago. It’s always been Chicago!”  
  
“Things change, Jensen!” Jared yells back. “Everything’s different now—you’re staying here, taking over the business…”  
  
“You’re not staying here for me.”  
  
“It’s not just for you,” Jared responds defensively, because the steadfast way Jensen had said it made it sounds like it they’d been discussing it for months. “Danni’s dad’s stationary now. Sandy’s gonna be interning at Harbor Elementary, Chad still doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing…”  
  
“Jared…”  
  
“Addie needs another pair of hands, my dad’s already selling the house—”  
  
“Yeah, so where are you gonna live once you’ve thrown your plans away and moved back to Rhylee?”  
  
“With you,” Jared replies easily, a tiny smile tugging his mouth. Yeah, he’s thought about it. “I can get a part time job. We can do it.”  
  
He really believes that. There probably isn’t anything he believes more. He believes in Jensen and Jensen believes in him. That is their truth. That’s just the way it is.  
  
In the end, it’s their biggest downfall.  
_  
  
:::::  
  
Jared takes a breath, shifting slightly from one foot to the other and knocking on the door before he has a chance to change his mind.  
  
It’s been a funny thing lately. Hot and heavy images flash behind his eyes every time he lets his guard down.  
  
 _  
Jensen’s hot and slick under his palms, his skin still warm from the sun, still rough with sand and grit. Jared drags his lips down his neck, his tongue marking a stripe on his skin and lapping up the sharp tang of salt. Sea and sweat and Jensen. His dick hardens between their bellies.  
  
Jensen groans at the jolt and they tumble back, reaching blindly for any obstacles in their way as they drag their feet through the doors, still connected by lips and skin.  
  
The air conditioning inside the beach house hits their bare skin like a splash of ice water and Jared wonders if the shiver that goes all the way through Jensen is because of the cool air or something else.  
  
He shoves his hand down the baggy opening in Jensen’s shorts and stops wondering anything at all.  
_  
  
It’s not the fanciest building, but it’s pretty nice; a fairly new apartment block that Jared hasn’t seen before, right on the harbor. The door to Penthouse 4 swings open just as Jared snatches his hand back and Jensen appears on the other side, dressed in a dark grey suit with a travel mug clutched in one hand.  
  
“Oh, hey.” Jensen falters for a moment and Jared smiles tightly. It’s got to mean something that he can still fluster him. _Maybe it means you’re a sixteen-year-old girl._  
  
Jensen doesn’t seem to see it. “I was just on my way out. Got a meeting with the financiers…” He gestures down at the suit with the mug by way of explanation, and Jared nods anyway.  
  
“Oh, yeah, no—this’ll only take a minute.” Jensen nods back, makes no move to come out in the hall. Clearly he has a minute to spare. Clearly Jared had better make his point.  
  
“It’s about yesterday, actually.”  
  
 _  
He’s got Jensen pinned to the couch with his knees on either side of Jensen’s hips as Jensen’s nimble fingers grapple with the string on Jared’s shorts without breaking the kiss.  
  
Jared tugs on the fleshy pout of Jensen’s bottom lip before he tears his mouth away, breathing hard as he meets Jensen’s glassy eyes, wide and dark and half-lidded. Impossibly green. His breath hitches as he stares, and then his hands go to Jensen’s shorts.  
  
Their hands collide, bumping into each other in their haste to get naked. Jensen’s cock springs free, hard and swollen.  
  
Jared wraps his hand around it and Jensen groans, loud. Jared’s too far gone to stop now, even if he wanted to.  
_  
  
It hits its mark precisely and Jensen stiffens, visually bracing himself. Sometimes, Jared wonders if he gets “flustered” confused with “defensive.” He’s never been great with ambiguity.  
  
“There’s no hard feelings, right?” Jared forges on. “‘Cause Chad said something yesterday that kinda threw me, and I just wanted to check that we’re on the same page. I mean—the way I figure it, there’s always going to be something between us. I’ve tried for five years to pretend otherwise, but I think last night spoke for itself…”  
  
Jensen opens his mouth to respond, but Jared cuts him off.  
  
“It’s two weeks tops, right?” Jared says, sounding surprisingly sure of himself. “Two weeks, and then God knows when we’ll see each other again.” He smiles, forcing Jensen to do the same; flustered or defensive or fucking over the moon, there’ll always be some ambiguity surrounding them. “We can do two weeks, can’t we?”  
  
 _  
  
Jensen’s making breathless little groans into the couch cushions. Tiny hiccups that coincide with Jared’s thrusts. He’s probably going to have bruises where Jared’s fingers are digging into the flesh of his thighs, but neither one of them seems to care at the moment.  
  
Sweaty bangs fall into his eyes, their bodies slick and slippery, and he shifts his knees to get better leverage, sliding deeper inside. Jensen jolts, his hiccups turning into one drawn out moan, and Jared feels his balls tighten in the way that tells him this has been far too long in coming.  
  
He squeezes his eyes closed, tightens his fingers, feels Jensen reach back and blindly grapple for his thigh to tug him closer, tighter, deeper.  
  
Jared closes his eyes and forgets.  
  
_  
Jared sounds pretty damn certain to his own ears, but Jensen falters, taking a second to catch on to exactly what Jared’s trying to propose here at the ass crack of dawn, gradually making him late for a board meeting.  
  
“Yeah.” Jensen shakes himself out of his stunned silence. “Yeah, I think we can.” He smirks, stepping out into the hall and forcing Jared to step back to allow him to swing he door shut behind them. “So long as you stop listening to Murray.”  
  
Jared smiles agreeably and they fall into step on the way out. “Oh yeah, I promise.”  
  
 _  
They’re not meeting each other’s eyes as they fumble with buttons and zippers and strings and Jared finds it fucking hilarious. They have each other’s spit drying on their skin and Jensen’s come is sticky on his fingers.  
  
“Doesn’t change anything.” Jensen’s head snaps up at his mumbled admission. His lips still have Jared’s teeth marks on them, and there are bruises darkening under his shorts that are the exact shape of Jared’s fingers; Jared finds he can only glance at him in short bursts for fear of swallowing every one of his words and dragging him back down on the couch.  
_  
It isn’t a good idea. None of this is. Jared knows it as well as Jensen seems to—but then, most of Jared’s bad life decisions have involved Jensen Ackles in some way.  
 _  
  
“I know.”  
_  
  
It’s strangely comforting to know that some things haven’t changed.  
  
  


:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

  
  
  
  
They fall into what Jared can only describe as a tryst. It should be weird, but it’s not.  
  
“So when’s your dad getting back?”  
  
They’re in Jared’s bed this time. The windows have blown open and the breezes are mixing with the a/c and breaking goose pimples out on Jared’s bare skin. The sheets cling precariously to his hips; Jensen’s still in the boxers he’d pulled on to go clean up before Chad and Sophia get back from the beach and stumble onto something tawdry.  
  
Jared looks up at where Jensen’s propped over him on his elbow. His hair’s a mess, all gel-less and floppy, and there’s a five o’clock shadow darkening his chin from where he hadn’t shaved this morning. He looks different, Jared thinks. Grown up, but not older. It probably has something to do with being back in this bed like this again, making Jared feel all of seventeen.  
  
He tries not to dwell on it.  
  
“Maybe a week,” Jared replies, mirroring Jensen’s position and watching Jensen’s gaze dip as the sheets shift. Jared makes sure he’s smirking when Jensen lifts his eyes again. “He wasn’t really sure when he called yesterday.”  
  
Jensen nods, reaching out and thumbing at a dried spot of paint on Jared’s bare shoulder. He’d been busy painting when Jensen had jumped him an hour ago and has remnants of the water scene still on his skin.  
  
“Do you think he’ll make it to the show?”  
  
Jared shrugs. “I dunno. Maybe. It’s not a big deal.”  
  
Jensen meets Jared’s wide and blank eyes for a second. Jared holds the gaze until Jensen blinks.  
  
“It’s a pretty big deal, Jared.”  
  
Jared had thought so too, at the time. Two weeks ago, it was a huge deal. Now he’s not so sure.  
  
“He’ll be bummed if he has to miss it.” Jensen sounds certain and Jared’s envious.  
  
He’s hit with a memory from a thousand years ago, from when Jared was young and stupidly in love and way out of his depth. “ _How do you always seem to know where you’re going?”_  
  
Jensen, huge and strong and gorgeous, rolling them and pinning Jared into the mattress, grinning down at him. _“I just follow you.”_  
  
Jared can’t remember now how far that morning was from the end.  
  
“Daddy advice?” Jared teases, partly because he’s done with this conversation and partly because he wants to goad a reaction. “Really, Jensen?”  
  
Jensen laughs at Jared’s dubiously raised eyebrow and smacks his shoulder, drops on his back against the pillows.  
  
“Asshole.”  
  
Jared tracks his movements and settles on his face. “How is the old man?” he asks, because he’s actually curious. Alan Ackles has always fascinated Jared; ever since that very first cameo appearance in his fifth grade class, he’s been this enigma that Jared can’t quite pin down, could never quite get a read on.  
  
It’s the main reason that Jared spent a good portion of his time staying well out of his way and off his radar.  
  
“He’s good,” Jensen says, distantly, his eyes drifting to the open windows. “He’s…the same. I guess.”  
  
Yeah, Jared figured as much.  
  
“We’re going to dinner on Friday night.” Jensen’s eyes swing back to Jared’s, trying too hard to make his voice sound casual. “I was supposed to ask you to come, actually.”  
  
Jared’s surprised. His eyebrows shoot up under his shaggy bangs.  
  
“Me?” he squeaks. “Why?”  
  
Jensen fails to tamp down a twitch of a grin and cuffs his shoulder. “I don’t know. You know he likes to keep tabs on all of Rhylee’s imports and exports.”  
  
Jared stares stupidly for a second. “How does he even know I’m back in town?”  
  
Jensen’s look of amusement drops into an unscrupulous grin. “Dude, you’re in Rhylee now, remember?”  
  
Jared relents easily. “How could I forget.”  
  
“It’s not a big deal; I wasn’t actually going to drag you there.” Jensen’s got him pinned to the mattress before Jared can respond. “I’ll cover.”  
  
Jared grins back. Lunges up to catch pouty lips in his and mumble into the kiss. “Well you’re just so good at it.”  
  
It’s two days later before Josh sidles up to him at the bar and pushes a tequila shot in front of him without any preamble.  
  
“So you’re coming to this family shindig, right? Jen told you?”  
  
Jared knocks the shot back and winces. “He told me I’m exempt, yeah.”  
  
“No, dude, you have to.”  
  
Jared shifts in his direction. It’s karaoke night; on stage, Danneel and Sophia are dong an off-key and slightly raunchy rendition of Bonnie Tyler while Chad heckles from the sidelines. Jensen had sent him to the bar to get another round before Misha’s Billy Joel attempt.  
  
“Oh, I have to, huh?”  
  
There’s another tequila shot pushed into his hand and Jared thinks that sometimes Josh get him confused with an impressionable sorority girl.  
  
“Totally. The boss requested you personally, man; I mean, you’re a bone fide buffer. You baffle them with all that artistic bullshit and stories ‘bout the city and they won’t even remember to ask me about the time I threw my college fund back in their faces to make it on my own as a second string bass player in a traveling alternative rock band.”  
  
It’s a pretty bad pitch, but luckily, Josh is always easier to read than his brother. And the fact that Joshua Ackles cares about this at all is enough to tell Jared that Jensen hadn’t asked for nothing.  
  
In the end, he isn’t sure if it’s the drama queen or the masochist in him that’s swayed by the knowledge, but either way, it’s the sole reason he finds himself agreeing.  
  
  
:::::::::  
  
  
The Ackles estate sits on the far edge of Lexington Avenue, a huge white three-storey building surrounded by just the right number of perfectly manicured hedges to soften the six foot iron fence protecting its precious cargo.  
  
Jared stares out the window as Jensen opens the security gates and guides the truck up the sloping driveway.  
  
“It looks the same,” Jared says stupidly as he gets out and slams the door shut behind him, looking up at the imposing building in front of him. He remembers Chad saying something very similar not two weeks ago, but Jared’s not at all hesitant to admit that he is still very much wary of this particular house.  
  
“Yeah, the gargoyles are at the painters,” Jensen drawls, slamming his own door and coming round to Jared’s side, the keys jingling in his fingers. He comes to a stop beside Jared and mirrors his stance, studying the familiar brick and marble.  
  
Jared looks over at him, his eyes quickly dancing over his face as Jensen looks at the house. Jared was fourteen when he’d first set foot inside this place, and he’d never really understood why Jensen had been so jittery about it. Why anyone would seem so embarrassed about having gold-plated en suites to pee in and maids to pick up his clothes. Then he’d met Alan and realized that it probably wasn’t bathrooms and butlers that made Jensen so humble.  
  
Jensen slides his eyes away from the house and catches Jared staring. “You ready?”  
  
Jared exhales as they fall into step on their way to the porch. “Do I have a choice?”  
  
Jensen laughs, but there’s no mirth in it. The sound makes Jared feel fifteen more than this house or the rest of the town ever will.  
  
“Dude, you’re on Ackles territory now.” He steps up to the door and lands three hard slams on the perfectly paneled wood. “Leave all dirty shoes, right wing activism, and free will at the door.”  
  
Jared smirks. How could he forget?  
  
The door swings open after a minute and a stern-faced brunette appears on the other side. Her hair’s pulled back into some kind of elaborate twist and her black dress is offset by a bleach-white apron.  
  
“Hey, Maria.” Jensen steps through the door without hesitation, smiling at her stern expression as the maid steps back to let them inside and gestures towards their jackets.  
  
“Mr Jensen,” she returns agreeably with a heavily accented twang; Jared guesses Spanish, maybe Italian.  
  
Jensen shucks his sports coat and hands it off to Maria, looking back at Jared lurking on the doorstep. He arches an eyebrow in silent question and Jared lifts his foot and plants it finitely in the hallway entrance.  
  
No turning back now.  
  
After Maria has stripped them of all unsightly outerwear, she herds them down the hall towards the dining room with their jackets still draped over her tiny arm.  
  
“Parents are waiting on you, Mr Jensen,” she says as Jared quickens his pace to keep up with Maria’s timely stride. Jensen lags a little behind, and Jared can hear the keys still rattling through his digits. “Mr Josh is here already.”  
  
Jared glances back over his shoulder and catches Jensen’s eyes. “Mr Jensen?” he mouths dubiously. Jensen shrugs, amused.  
  
“Believe me, it’s progress,” he whispers back. “Three months ago, I was ‘Master.’”  
  
Jared’s about to laugh when they round the corner into the lounge and all of his joyful inclinations are torched right out of his soul. The Ackleses can do that to a person, Jared’s found.  
  
“About damn time, Jensen.” Alan is on his feet, his spine ramrod straight, behind one of the love seats in the centre of the room. A glass of Scotch is cradled expertly in one hand, the other curled over the seat’s backrest; he raises the glass to his lips derisively. “You crawl here?”  
  
Jensen lifts his hand and waggles the keys pointedly. “I drove.”  
  
“In that piece of crap you roll around in?” Alan drawls over the rim. “It’s about the same thing, ain’t it?”  
  
Jared feels Jensen tense beside him, and then unclench. His voice shows no sign of strain when he speaks again.  
  
“So you keep telling me.”  
  
Walking into the Ackles house is kind of like the fist ten minutes of Saving Private Ryan, Jared thinks. All you can do is put your head down and plough on through. Brace yourself for the onslaught, try to dodge as much as you can, and hope that you can pick your way back out with most of your sanity relatively intact.  
  
Josh is slouched on one of the couches opposite, his legs splayed wide and his own glass balanced on one knee. He drops his head back over the cushions to look at them upside-down, widens his eyes, and mouths “help me.”  
  
Like a good soldier, Jensen lays a heavy slap of moral support to his brother’s shoulder as he passes and drops himself to the cushions beside him. They tend to apply the “leave no man behind” motto to their home visits, if Jared remembers correctly, even though their father relies almost entirely on the divide and conquer approach to parenting.  
  
“Even Josh beat you here and I’m pretty sure he’s reliant on shotgunning with his frat buddies…”  
  
“Hey, Dad, look who’s here!” Josh says suddenly, cutting off his father’s pointed tirade in its tracks, his voice laced with over-enthusiastic glee. “It’s Jared!”  
  
Jared feels his neck heating up as Josh turns and points giddily at where he’s still standing in the doorway. Alan shifts his pointed glare from Josh to Jared and blinks slowly.  
  
“Yes, of course,” he says tersely, looking him over, and for a second, Jared feels ice run through his veins. Then Alan’s laughing, the tanned lines of his face wrinkling slightly under the pressure. “Mr Padalecki! The one and only. Come on in, son. Take a seat.”  
  
Jared does. Shuffles past the couch that Jensen and Josh are reclined on and perches himself on the chair opposite. Jensen watches him take the seat, one eyebrow twitching amusedly when he dares a glance over. He’s always found it particularly amusing to throw Jared into his living room and watch him squirm. He used to say it was because it was the only time he ever saw Jared speechless; Jared thinks it was kind of like dressing up a chimp and sending it for lunch at the White House.  
  
“What’re you having, boy? Scotch?” Alan’s rattling the drinks cabinet at his elbow, shaking a bottle at him that Jared suspects cost more than the chair he’s sitting on.  
  
“Uh, yeah, sure,” Jared says, even though he’s pretty sure that adding a shot of liquor to the situation is a bad idea.  
  
“So Jensen tells me you’ve got a big show coming up in Dallas.” Alan hands off the drinks, one to Jared, the other to Jensen, who averts his eyes into the amber liquid before Jared can catch them. “Pretty impressive.” The lilt to his voice doesn’t shine with nobility, but then, that’s Alan Ackles for you. He doesn’t see the need to add pitch or stress to his words. He doesn’t say what he doesn’t mean. Once you have that understood, you have insight into his entire psyche.  
  
“Thanks,” Jared mumbles, taking a gulp of the drink and trying not to wince as it burns down his gullet.  
  
“Oh, don’t give me any of that modest bullshit, boy!” Alan says gruffly, smacking Jared on the shoulder as he rounds his chair to reclaim his stance by the liquor. The jolt jars Jared’s arm and sends the scotch sluicing over the side of the glass and onto his pant leg.  
  
He frowns as Jensen’s eyebrow hitches again.  
  
“It’s not every day a kid from Leighton makes it big in the city.”  
  
Josh winces in his place beside Jensen. “Dad.”  
  
Alan chuckles heartily as Jared raises his eyes just slightly to meet Jensen’s.  
  
“What? I’m joking. He knows I’m joking.”  
  
Yeah, a real fucking riot, Jared thinks, taking another gulp of scotch to muffle his brain.  
  
“But seriously, son—I mean it. Your old man has something to be proud of.” Jared looks up, only because Alan’s tone is edging dangerously close to sincerity. He inclines his glass carelessly towards Jensen and Josh’s couch. “I mean, if this one can’t fucking shut up about it, I can’t imagine what your daddy’s like to live with.”  
  
Jared’s forehead creases at Alan’s words and the knowing smirk that he shoots at the couch before he downs the rest of his drink and busies himself with another. By the time Jared’s swung questioning eyes over towards Jensen, Josh is already on his feet and clapping his hands excessively loudly.  
  
“Okay, so food?” he says, looking around hopefully. “Dad? We good?”  
  
“We’re waiting on your mother,” Alan mutters dryly into his refilled glass, his eyes rolling. His son is still refusing to meet Jared’s seeking eyes. “God forbid she greets company in anything less than three coats of war paint and a freshly pruned mink.”  
  
Donna greets them fifteen minutes later in an expensive-looking silk wrap, diamond earrings bigger than Jared’s left toe, and far fewer than three coats of make-up.  
  
“You just have to tell us about New York!” she says, all flawless skin and wide, giddy eyes that Jared suspects can be somehow linked to the martini glass she’s been wearing like another accessory since she descended the staircase.  
  
Jensen doesn’t meet his eyes once.  
  
  
:::::  
  
  
Jared’s vision blurs into streaks of neon orange headlights and yellow streetlamps speeding past outside his window.  
  
The radio is playing low, almost drowned out by the hum of the a/c. Jensen’s fingers are tapping a rhythm against the steering wheel as he drives them away from his parents’.  
  
Dinner went as well as could be expected. Alan got drunk and recounted the time his eldest son almost single-handedly ruined their family’s company. Josh got progressively drunker and redirected every such attack towards Jared and his blossoming career in the city. Jared answered almost every question that was thrown his way and generally tried to keep his eyes on his pork.  
  
Of course, like any good dinner party, the shit hit the fan about the time the cheesecake hit their plates.  
  
“So Jared.” For her part, Donna had done a particularly splendid job of feigning innocence, smiling too wide and making offhand comments about the pork or the table linens as an act of conversation. The cheesecake, evidently, was not as interesting. “When will you be going back home?”  
  
For a split second, the words were on the tip of Jared’s tongue: _Well, when we’re finished eating, of course._  
  
Wait. They weren’t talking about the same place. They weren’t even talking about the same state.  
  
“I…I’m not sure yet, ma’am,” he replied honestly.  
  
Alan looked pretty put out by his answer, and Donna just looked confused. Josh looked relieved that the heat was off of him for the moment.  
  
Jensen glanced up from the table for the first time all night and met his eyes briefly, looking back to his father when he started up on yet another story about all of the times he could have moved to New York if he’d been given half the chance.  
  
“Where am I going?” Jensen's voice breaks through the silence as the car approaches the fork that separates downtown and the marina from the beaches.  
  
What he means is _your place or mine._ Jared blinks the dancing yellow dots away once the car slows at a stoplight and Jensen looks at him with a questioningly arched eyebrow.  
  
“Home,” Jared says, just to see which direction Jensen veers.  
  
“Home it is,” Jensen says. The light flashes green and the road in front of them opens up to sandy coves and the black sea.  
  
Jared watches the reflection of himself smiling. Tries not to think about how that word is supposed to mean anywhere else but right where they’re headed.  
  
  


::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

  
  
  
“I don’t mean to toot my own horn over here,” Addie announces as she slides the last of the vases onto the table in front of Jared and beams proudly, “but have you ever seen a prettier bunch of flowers?”  
  
“Can’t say that I have.” Jared chuckles; he’s not quite gay enough to fully appreciate a tasteful posey arrangement, but he isn’t quite stupid enough to question Adelaide’s brilliance, either. “Danni’s gonna love them.”  
  
“She’d better,” Addie replies dryly, “‘cause these fingers ain’t touching another carnation til spring, God willing.”  
  
Addie’s been honored with the task of producing the flower arrangements for the rehearsal dinner. Like Jared, Addie bends to the will of Danni the über-bride; it’s quite hilarious, although Jared treasures his balls too much to laugh about it to either of them.  
  
“So I hear you made nice with my grandson?”  
  
Jared raises an eyebrow. “Alan Ackles isn’t exempt from the disclosure agreement? I’m shocked.”  
  
Addie waves dismissively. “No disclosure. Just good old fashioned gossip.” She grins. “It’s not every day the town’s golden couple returns to their roots, you know. You’ll make dreamers out of all of us if you two ain’t careful.”  
  
Jared frowns, fiddling with the ribbons on one of the vases, and gets slapped on the wrist for his troubles.  
  
“Nothing’s _returned_ ,” Jared drawls, rubbing his wrist just to do something with his hands. “It’s nothing like that. Not…not really.” Addie’s still staring him down and he sighs, turning guilty eyes up to her over the decorations.  
  
“It can’t be anything permanent.”  
  
Addie’s eyebrows inch higher. “And why the hell not?”  
  
Jared sighs irritably. “You know why,” he mumbles. Addie just waits him out and he sighs again, louder. “It’s been five years, Addie. I thought I’d grown up! Before I got here, I _felt_ grown up. I felt like…I felt like I was over it.”  
  
“And now?”  
  
“Now, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get over it. Not really.” He looks up at her, only letting her see his eyes for a split second. A second’s all Adelaide’s ever needed. “But it’s him. It’s _Jensen_ , you know?”  
  
“Let me tell you something I _know_ about Jensen,” Addie says after a beat, leaning forward on her elbows and lowering her voice. “Since he was an itty bitty kid, Jensen has been able to see things in people. Everyone but himself, ironically enough.” There’s no irony lacing her words, though, just facts. Just the truth, as simple as she sees it.  
  
“His daddy is great at selling oil, so he’ll help it sell it til his soul bleeds. Joshua wants to play guitar, so he’ll let him play it til his family falls down. You’re good at drawing those pictures of yours,” she reaches out to tip his chin til he meets her gaze, “so by God, you’ll draw ‘em.”  
  
A sad, distant smile ghosts her face and Jared winces. “Even if it tears his heart out.”  
  
Jared searches her eyes for what she’s trying to tell him, not really wanting to delve into all the barely-scratched truths that are lying just below the surface, because yeah, Jared can believe it.  
  
It’s always been hinted at, and he’d sure always suspected it—deep in the back of his mind, in the part that wasn’t drenched in betrayal and blinded by fury.  
  
But it doesn’t change anything—it never will—so Jared breaks her gaze and presses his fingers into his thighs to ground himself.  
  
Addie sighs; she’s never needed much from Jared to read him neigh on perfect. Conversation over; that’s what his eyes are saying.  
  
“Go find me the rest of that string to tie these babies up a little tighter. We wouldn’t want her highness to worry any.”  
  
She taps his hands, still resting lightly against his jeans, and totters off to the kitchen.  
  
Jared’s rifling through the side table for string when he happens to glance at the leaflet that’s on the top of a pile he just pulled haphazardly from the back of the drawer. He stares at it, the letters settling in his brain before he reaches out and picks it up on auto-pilot.  
  
His forehead creases as he rereads the cover and then flicks it open, scanning the familiar curl of the handwriting that’s graffitied some of the margins. His lips wordlessly shape some of the words and the paper falls from his fingers like he’s been burned by the harmless paper that Addie has no reason to keep lying around. Not unless…  
  
He slams the drawer shut, bracing his hands on top of the desk and breathing in and out, the steady intake doing nothing to ease his knotted stomach.  
  
“You found that string yet, hon?” Addie’s sweet voice floats in from the kitchen and Jared squeezes his eyes shut to wipe the stunned sheen from them before clearing his throat and replying.  
  
“No, not yet,” he yells back shakily.  
  
Touching a hot griddle sure would have stung a lot less.  
  
  


:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

  
  
  
  
Jared blinks his eyes open to a second of disorientation of not being fully awake but being distinctly aware that he’s not in his own bed.  
  
He’s flat on his stomach, arms curled above his head, and there are crisp white sheets pooled low on his waist. The windows above the bed and across the rooms are open and the sea breezes are blowing in, fluttering the thin drapes that they’d never quite got around to closing the night before.  
  
Jared listens to the distant sound of gulls and waves and bustle drifting up from the marina, shaking himself fully awake as he realizes that he’s very much alone in listening to these sounds.  
  
He rolls over and pushes himself up onto his elbows immediately, rubbing a hand over his scratchy eyes, his bones aching in that familiar way they tend to after a night of pretty awesome sex. Jared’s trying really hard to be normal and act like he’s supposed to in all of this, but there’s still a medical leaflet hidden away in his satchel and three pretty extraordinary canvases drying on Jensen’s coffee tables and Jared can feel his carefully erected façade starting to crumble.  
  
He’s still disorientated when he hears the door rattle and Jensen’s suddenly there, take out cups balanced in one hand and a small paper bag clutched in the other.  
  
Jared blinks at him owlishly as he smiles and holds the stuff up like it’s show and tell. “I went out for breakfast,” he says, and something loosens and settles in Jared’s chest. “There’s a bakery just opened up on Venice; they do muffins.”  
  
Jared likes muffins. He also likes Jensen filling up the doorway and looking particularly delectable, all sleep-ruffled with Jared’s crinkled t-shirt hanging slightly too big off his frame.  
  
“What kind of muffins?” Jared asks in a scratchy morning voice; Jensen’s apologetic face breaks out in a grin and he settles on the end of the bed.  
  
“All kinds.” He leans in to catch Jared’s lips in a soft kiss, the coffee and food resting between them, and Jared closes his eyes, hums contently and tries to clear some of the fog from his brain.  
  
“Here.” Jensen pushes one of the coffees into Jared’s hand and Jared yawns, takes a lazy gulp.  
  
It’s got cream but no sugar and Jared’s gut tightens.  
  
Jensen takes his coffee black. No sugar, no syrup, no frills.  
  
Jared likes sugar—tons of it, in fact. The more, the better. His coffee takes three packets standard so he can get a buzz, but still taste the cream.  
  
Jensen used to know that.  
  
“So hey, I need to go into the office this morning to straighten some things out,” Jensen says, and Jared’s smile falters.  
  
“You just went into work _yesterday_. You trying for employee of the month or somethin’?”  
  
Jensen smiles back teasingly. “Don’t talk to me about workaholics. A couple of soggy canvases currently ruining my two hundred dollar carpet are calling the kettle black right there.”  
  
Jared’s grin settles and he takes another gulp of coffee. “You seriously have been working around the clock, though.”  
  
“And how exactly would you know _that_?”  
  
Jared drops his gaze to his coffee lid, feigns nonchalance. “Addie told me so.”  
  
Jensen snorts and shifts around. “I thought you knew better than to believe a word that woman says.”  
  
“I dunno. She says some good stuff.” Jared pauses. “I mean, you still talk to her all the time, right? Your dad still calls her and stuff.”  
  
Jensen snorts, but this time the jab is personal. “As much as he ever has, sure.”  
  
Jared frowns. “Well yeah, but enough to know that she’s alright, right? I mean—you guys check in with her.” He looks up and meets Jensen’s eyes. “Right?”  
  
Jensen frowns. “What are you trying to say?”  
  
“Nothing,” Jared insists at once. “Nothing—I just worry, that’s all. I mean, she seems invincible to us, but she _is_ getting older. You know, health deteriorates and…”  
  
Jensen shifts a little and his eyes drop away to the sheets; something’s definitely not right. “I mean, she would tell you if something were wrong, right?” Jared throws his last card on the table. “She’d tell _someone_.”  
  
Jensen looks up and his eyes are guarded. Jared never could play poker for shit. “Sometimes people have their reasons.”  
  
Jared’s throat tightens, but then Jensen goes on. “But yeah. I guess she would.”  
  
The tension loosens and Jared reaches over to tug the discarded bag into his lap and dig out a muffin. His fingers curl around something at the bottom and he pulls it out with a confused frown.  
  
Sugar. Three neat little packets of it and a napkin.  
  
“What?” Jensen asks, a quirky smile pulling at his mouth when Jared looks up to grin madly at him.  
  
“Nothing,” Jared says, but the way he leans in and presses his mouth to Jensen’s says different. Jensen knows he’s rubbish at cards, and Jared doesn’t see the point in attempting a poker face this late in the game.  
  
“Nothing at all.”  
  
:::::  
  
 _  
Sandy has always been, despite her white collar upbringing, a helpless romantic.  
  
Jared lives three blocks away from a huge white stone church. It’s nice, for his neighbourhood. Probably one of the prettiest things Leighton has to offer. It’s Protestant, and far too lenient in its policies of acceptance for most of Rhylee’s elitist population, but it’s popular with the more pious and less Catholic residents.  
  
Every couple of Saturdays in the summer and spring, there’s a wedding in it. These events, of course, would have probably gone unrecognised by Jared himself if it wasn’t for Sandy eagerly scanning the announcements page every Saturday morning from May through to August.  
  
Jared hates weddings. They’re too big and too white and too stressful and at the risk of sounding like his father, a goddamn waste of money. Sandy loves them.  
  
“Doesn’t she look beautiful?” It’s never a question. Jared could voice his opinion until the sun went down and he was blue in the face and it wouldn’t take the dreamy look off his friend’s face. “She looks like a princess.”  
  
Jared thinks they all looked the same. All white. All curled. All glossed. It reminds him a little bit of Charlton: a sea of a thousand kids all dressed in matching navy and Christ, he hates those uniforms.  
  
“Yeah,” Jared says indifferently, wondering how long it can possibly take for two people to walk 50 yards and say “I do.” “Sure.”  
  
They must have sat on the stone wall outside that church a hundred times and watched a hundred women get out of a hundred cars.  
  
“I’m gonna wear white,” Sandy announces one morning, waiting for the future Mrs. Frederick Warren to make her entrance. She’s twenty-two minutes late and Jared is secretly giddy. They’ve yet to witness a no show, but Jared figures it had to happen sooner or later. “With a huge veil that they’ll draw back dramatically at the end of the aisle and everyone will gasp and he’ll start to cry and tell me how beautiful I look.”  
  
Jared refrains from rolling his eyes as Sandy stares at the churchyard where loitering guests are getting antsy. A tuxedo-ed toddler screams and runs circles around a pile of leaves near the entrance.  
  
Twenty-five minutes and counting.  
  
“Do you think we’ll get married and live happily ever after?” she asks suddenly, her voice soft, and Jared wants to push her off the wall.  
  
Sometimes, Sandy is the smartest person Jared knows. And then other times, she’s just a naïve, dreamy fifteen-year-old. Then again, he supposes all fifteen-year-olds are supposed to be naïve and dreamy. Sitting outside of churches, watching pretty weddings with wide eyes and open hearts and not knowing what happens when the dress comes off and the kids start screaming and the sex gets boring.  
  
A white car rounds the corner and pulls up in front of the church gates and the screaming toddler is quickly ushered inside. Sandy’s eyes are still on Jared, though, so he feels it best to answer.  
  
“Sure,” he lies, because he has no doubt that Sandy will get married and live happily ever after some day.  
  
Sandy grins and watches Mrs. Frederick Warren slip effortlessly from the car on a wave of silk and gloss and giddiness. Another too-white bride going to another too-expensive wedding, a naïve glutton for punishment.  
  
“Yeah,” Sandy says finally, certainly, as they watch her disappear into the church. They hear the first strands of the familiar march and Sandy suddenly stands, brushing dirt and leaves off her jeans. “They’re going to live happily ever after.”  
  
Jared just smiles and follows her home. Sandy makes sweeping comments like that all the time and Jared believes her. He believes her when she says they’ll get the hell out of Rhylee one day. He believes her when she says that Jared will be the richest, most famous artist in the world. He believes her when she says they’ll be friends forever. Always, no matter what, and Sandy McCoy is rarely wrong.  
  
So if she believes in happily ever after, who is Jared to tell her any different?  
_  
  
:::::  
  
They’re three minutes late and there’s still no sign of Sophia. Chad lets out a frustrated sigh and mumbles beside Jared where they’re resting against the dining room table.  
  
“Danni’s gonna be pissed.” He sounds slightly terrified, which is wise, in Jared’s humble opinion. It is only a rehearsal, but to turn up late is probably foretelling of the main event.  
  
Jared shrugs. “Go and hurry her up, then.”  
  
Chad looks at him like he’s an idiot. “You don’t hurry a girl away from a bathroom mirror, you fucking moron. I learned that living with you sophomore year.”  
  
Jared frowns a little but doesn’t retort. So he thinks a blow dryer gives his hair a more manageable volume and shine. He’s still secure in his sexuality. The fact that his sexuality involves a preference for sucking cock is just a bonus.  
  
Jared digs his fingers into the wood. “Hey, Chad?”  
  
“Yeah?” Chad says distractedly, checking his watch again and glaring at the staircase as if it’s keeping his girlfriend captive.  
  
“Has anyone said anything to you about Addie?”  
  
“Addie? What about her? She okay?” His suddenly panicked eyes tell Jared that Chad’s heard as much as he has.  
  
“Yeah, I mean…” Jared makes a frustrated noise. “I don’t know. She seems fine. But she always seems fine.”  
  
“So what’s the problem?”  
  
“I found this medical flyer in her dresser the other day and it has Jensen’s writing all over it and a contact number for this specialist and it just…”  
  
Jared trails off as Chad’s casual interest slides to startled and then downright guilty. Jared narrows his eyes. “You do know something.”  
  
Chad’s eyes widen. “No I don’t.”  
  
“Yes you do.” Jared insists, pushing off the corner of the table to take a step closer to him and raises his voice warningly, “Chad - if Addie’s sick you should fucking tell me!”  
  
“I know I should!” Chad yells back. “Believe me, man, but…”  
  
“But what?”  
  
Chad deflates a little. “But it’s not my place.”  
  
“Then whose place is it? ‘Cause Addie certainly wouldn’t bother anyone with it and Jensen isn’t giving anything up.”  
  
“Ask Sandy,” Chad mumbles reluctantly, and Jared’s tirade stutters.  
  
“Sandy?” It makes sense, actually. Out of all of them, a secret would eat away at her the most. Sandy McCoy is not a good liar. If there’s something he needs to know, Sandy will be the one to tell him, he’s pretty sure.  
  
Jared’s about to press Chad for more information when Sophia appears, still pinning her hair as she rushes down the stairs in a flouncy red dress and platform heels.  
  
“I’m here. I’m good.”  
  
Chad looks hesitantly at Jared one more time and then grabs his car keys and rushes everyone out the door.  
  
  
:::::  
  
  
The rehearsal dinner is being held at a fancy new grill restaurant downtown. Jared, Chad, and Sophia arrive ten minutes late, but luckily, Danni is a little too tipsy to care and way too busy mingling to scold them for it. Jensen’s already seated at a table with Chris and Josh, laughing at some story Josh is telling loudly with lewd hand gestures.  
  
Jared lingers by the doorway and waits for Jensen to look up, catch his eye, and wave him over. Chris looks over his shoulder and smirks at him in that way that Jared hates. Like he knows something Jared doesn’t. Fucking Rottweiler.  
  
“Glad you could make it,” Tom says, sidling up to Jared out of nowhere and pumping his hand. Jared smiles tightly and Tom lowers his voice to a stage whisper: “Don’t worry; she’s on her fifth glass of rose. Time has lost all meaning at this point.”  
  
Jared’s tight smile holds until he spots Sandy crossing the room towards Chad and Sophia at the bar; he pats Tom on the shoulder, slinking around him. “Excuse me for a second, would you?” he says. “Keep that rose comin’ though, huh?”  
  
He intercepts Sandy and curls a hand around her elbow, effectively halting her in her tracks. She turns with a bothered frown but breaks into a smile when she sees who it is. “Hey.”  
  
“I need to talk to you,” Jared says thinly, keeping his voice low; Jensen’s friends are still tracking him with their eyes and Chad is feigning interest in the drinks menu while shooting worried little glances over his shoulder. The little knot in Jared’s gut tells him this is not going to go well.  
  
“Okay,” Sandy chirps, unfazed, “talk.”  
  
“Not here.” He pulls them back to the door and into the cloakroom beside the hostess counter. Sandy’s looking at him like he’s grown another head when he turns on her.  
  
“Who’s Philip McEwen?”  
  
The humoring smile Sandy has in place dips a little before she catches herself. “What?”  
  
“Philip McEwen,” Jared repeats slowly, reaching into his back pocket and pulling out the leaflet he has stashed there. “He’s a doctor at this medical centre in New Mexico; I found this in Addie’s house with Jensen’s handwriting all over it. Now tell me, why does Addie need a medical specialist?”  
  
“Jared…”  
  
“ _Tell me_.”  
  
“She doesn’t, Jared, it’s not…”  
  
“Is this what you brought me home for?” he says. He knows his voice has risen way past hushed now and is probably drifting out into the main room for everyone to hear. He doesn’t really give a shit. “Is this how you plan to redeem yourselves, making everything all better by lying to me? By making me feel stupid!”  
  
“No one’s making you feel stupid,” Sandy says resolutely, reaching a hand out to Jared but stopping before she touches him, looking pained. “Jared, Philip McEwen is a cardiac surgeon working out of a New Mexico research facility.”  
  
Jared’s gut roils in panic and he swallows quickly. “Cardiac surgeon?” In his nauseating dizziness, it takes a minute for the words to register. “Like her heart? There’s something wrong with her heart?”  
  
“It’s called myocarditis,” she says slowly, like she’s talking to a startled animal. “It’s when there’s unexplained inflammation of the heart muscle.”  
  
Jared thinks he’s going to fall down. “But it’s not serious, right? I mean, these guys can treat it.” He waves the leaflet between them. He has no reason to believe that Philip McEwen isn’t as fucking amazing as the blurb on the back page claims he is.  
  
Sandy pauses, her eyes soft and not at all panicked, but it’s doing absolutely nothing to calm Jared’s frazzled nerves.  
  
“They can try,” she says softly, but it only makes Jared more nervous.  
  
“I can’t believe this,” he mutters harshly, folding the leaflet into rough little squares to keep himself from punching the wall. “I’ve been here for two weeks—two fucking weeks—and no one’s said a fucking _word_!”  
  
He thrusts the folded paper towards her and its falls to the floor. Sandy doesn’t even flinch, just standing there and letting Jared have his tantrum, his hands wringing in a classic show of guilt and nervousness. Jared realizes then that he’s not panicking. He’s fucking _furious_.  
  
“And Jensen! He’s been in bed with me every fucking night—and I asked him! I asked him if she was okay and he said yes! That fucking liar—”  
  
He’s three steps from the exit, about to throw some of his weight in Jensen’s face, when Sandy grabs his arm and jerks him to a stop. “No, Jared! Jared, he didn’t lie. He didn’t lie!”  
  
Jared stops and spins on his heel, still vibrating with pent-up anger. Sandy takes a breath, lets it out harshly, and looks up, and Jared’s anger abates a little.  
  
“It’s me, Jared,” she says. Jared doesn’t follow. Doesn’t understand the tender look on her face. “It’s not Addie. It’s me.”  
  
“Wha…” Jared swallows past the lump in his throat. “What do you mean?”  
  
“I’m sick.”  
  
Jared’s world tilts on its axis.  
  
:::::  
  
  
 _  
Jared’s legs are shaking as he makes his way up the dock towards the beach house.  
  
He hears laughter coming from inside, carrying on the soft breezes coming in off the water. It’s Thursday, which means it’s probably a barbecue. Chris and Steve were supposed to bring beer and guitars. Jared was supposed to be here half an hour ago, but he had to drop by the marina to file some papers for his dad and he’d been ambushed on his way out by Justin Hartley.  
  
He’d kind of lost track of time after that.  
  
“Hey, you’re late…” Danni catches him coming in through the kitchen doors and starts to smile but stops at his blank expression, reaching out for his trembling hands.  
  
“Hey, what’s wrong?”  
  
Everyone else is scattered around the room and the doors to the back deck are open. Josh yells from where he’s balanced on the back of the sofa.  
  
“’Bout time, kid!” He lifts a bottle towards Jared in greeting. “Grab a beer.”  
  
Jared steps forward instead and zeros in on Jensen, who’s watching him, standing there with the rest of them.  
  
“Did you fuck Justin Hartley?”  
  
It’s poised as a question, but Jared has a horrible, sinking feeling that it doesn’t need to be. Jared doesn’t know Justin very well. They had a few classes together his first year but never exchanged more than a couple of words. He knows that Mr Hartley works with Sandy’s father and that the family is pretty good friends with the Ackleses. He knows that he’s never really liked Justin much, no matter how harmless everyone claims him to be. He doesn’t like the way he looks at Jensen. Doesn’t like the way they talk about their fathers and business and the country club losers like they have far more in common than Jensen and Jared could ever have. He doesn’t like the way Justin looked at him sometimes like he’s a waste of space, like he’s some dumb kid who has no right encroaching on their perfect little world. And Jensen knows that. Jensen knows exactly how much Justin rubs Jared the wrong way. By this point, Jensen knows pretty much everything about him that there is to know.  
  
“Did you?” Jared’s voice rises to a shout; no one’s moved yet and Jensen’s still standing there, stoically staring, and the hope that this is some huge cosmic joke is beginning to ebb away.  
  
“Hey, Jared, uh… Jensen told me you know about what happened between us and, well, I just want you to know—no hard feelings, man. I mean, it was just a one time thing, he would never…”  
  
“Jared, maybe…” Sandy steps around the counter and moves towards him, but Jared thrusts out a hand to stop her.  
  
“No! I want to hear him say it.”  
  
Josh is looking at Jensen like he’s insane, Chad is shifting nervously, and Jensen opens his mouth, closes it, and looks Jared right in the eye.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Josh’s eyes widen to the size of saucers and his mouth opens in a disbelieving gape, but the complete lack of reaction from everyone else verifies all of Jared’s fears. _  
  
“I mean, Sandy and Danneel told me not to say anything and just leave well enough alone, but I just wanted to clear the air…”  
 _  
“It was a mistake, Jared.” Sandy’s voice is bordering on frantic, her words tripping over themselves as she moves towards Jared again. “Jensen, tell him…”  
  
But Jared’s already running. _  
  
  


:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

  
  
  
When Jared was little, and he threw a hissy fit, his mother would say it was the artist in him.  
  
In fact, most of Jared’s less desirable qualities were attributed to the artist in him, according to his mother. Untidiness and disorganisation were just his _artistic nature_. Tantrums were just his _creative outlet_. Really, though, he was just a drama queen.  
  
That’s why, when he eventually pushes his way through the door later that night with itchy eyes and trembling fingers, Jared’s unsurprised to find his friends scattered around the living room, all staring at him expectantly.  
  
“Where the hell have you been?” Sophia says, kind of pissy, and she’s the only who has any right to be, having been dragged into this fucking drama without signing up for it. “We’ve been all over the place looking for your princess ass. You can’t just friggin’ up and disappear for six hours and not say anything, Jared, Jesus…”  
  
Jared tries not to notice the fact that Sandy shot up from the couch when he came through the door but hasn’t made a move towards him yet. Or the way Chad is shifting guiltily at Sophia’s side, or the way Jensen is steadfastly refusing to meet his eyes. He tries to forget the Shirley MacLaine performance he’d just pulled at the restaurant not five hours ago before storming out and wandering the streets.  
  
His mother would have called it his _artistic flare_.  
  
Instead of saying exactly what he’s thinking, specifically _“You bunch of no good lying fucking bastards. How could you not tell me she’s dying? Please, God, not her heart,”_ Jared clears his throat and hopes he sounds marginally level headed.  
  
“I need to know,” he says, chalking the slight hitch in voice up to the fact he hasn’t used it in a couple of hours. “You need to tell me everything.”  
  
Sandy lowers her chin and nods slowly. And then she tells him.  
  
She tells him about how it’s a rare form that’s throwing every doctor and specialist for a loop. She tells him that her family's running out of options, running out of money, and the doctors are running out of things to pump into her. Running out of scans and prescriptions.  
  
She’ll never make it to the top of the transplant list in time, and even if she did, she’d probably never make it off the operating table.  
  
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” Jared says distantly. It sounds like his voice can’t quite keep up with his mouth. His body feels light and tingly, all of the voices and sounds detached and tinny like they’re caught inside a wind tunnel.  
  
In the twenty minutes he’s been sitting there, trying to will sense back into the world and feeling back into his fingers, the story’s gone from shocking to tragic to fucking depressing.  
  
“I can’t believe you didn’t say anything.” He glances up through his bangs at them, but he’s really talking to Jensen and everyone knows it.  
  
“I asked them not to,” Sandy insists, and she’s talking about Jensen too. “I asked them not to say anything yet. With New York and your show and your Mom and…” She shakes her head slightly, her face crumbling in something like desperation. It’s the most horrible thing Jared can ever remember seeing on her pretty face. “I didn’t want you staying here out of some fucked up sense of guilt or loyalty.”  
  
And it’s such bullshit that Jared wants to laugh.  
  
Of course he would have stayed out of loyalty; why the hell else are they all sitting here? Why did everyone keep this a secret for God knows how many months in the first place? Loyalty; it’s what their ragtag bunch lives by. It’s always been their downfall.  
  
“There has to be _something_ they can do,” Jared says desperately. “You can’t have tried _everything_. You have time…”  
  
“Not enough of it,” Sandy says softly, and Jared feels the tears stinging behind his eyes slide down his face before he can rein them in.  
  
“You people have more money than God!” Jared yells, suddenly terrified and suffocating in his own skin. “You can _buy_ time!”  
  
He gets nothing but blank, pitying stares in response, and he has to get out of here.  
  
“I can’t do this.” He stalks towards the kitchen for some space, for some reprieve. Away from these people who’ve had months to mull this over and come to peace with it.  
  
He leans against the counter, listening to the whispers from the next room when Jensen appears in the doorway and Jared sighs a humorless, coughing laugh.  
  
“How the hell could you not tell me?” he asks, getting straight to the point; quite frankly, Jared thinks they’ve danced around more penny truths in their five year relationship than most people do in three lifetimes. He laughs hollow when he’s met with a blank stare and patient eyes. “Jesus, I don’t know why I’m surprised.”  
  
Jensen looks offended for a second before he nods knowingly at Jared’s red eyes and trembling hands.  
  
“I didn’t tell you,” he says, coming beside Jared so their arms are touching; Jared wants to flinch away on principle, “because it was Sandy. And she begged me not to.”  
  
“Five fucking months, Jensen!” Jared yells hysterically, pushing away from the counter and throwing his hands up. “Five months and I didn’t know a thing…”  
  
“And would you have picked up if I had called to tell you?” Jensen asks calmly. He’s well-versed in the Padalecki hissy fit; dealing with it is like riding a bike, Jared guesses.  
  
“Of course I would have!” Jared lies, but he can feel himself cracking, breaking apart inside, all the tightly-reined emotions that he’s tried so hard to keep in check around this man coming undone and spilling out of him at once. “It’s Sandy! It’s Sandy and she’s…she’s…”  
  
Jensen’s got him locked in place in his strong arms and makes nonsensical soothing sounds before Jared even acknowledges that he’s sobbing.   


  


::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::  


  


“Looks good, kid.”  
  
His dad slides the card back onto the counter and reclines in his chair. Jared printed the prototype from his e-mail this morning only because he’s been asking about it.  
  
Sophia had balked when he’d assured her that his father wouldn’t be needing one of the formal exhibit invites. “But how’s he gonna know how to RSVP?” she’d asked, bewildered, starting to unravel at the thought of something throwing her impeccable head count off kilter. “He won’t,” was all Jared had said.  
  
“Y’all ready for it?”  
  
Jared shrugs and takes another bite of burger, mumbling around the mouthful. “Just about.” Gerry chortles, his own dinner partly demolished in the take out cartons between them.  
  
“Man, your first solo show.” Jared looks up to find his father staring in his direction with a detached expression. “I wish I could come to this one, kiddo.”  
  
Jared shakes his head immediately. “Don’t worry about it.” There’s no point in dwelling on it; he can’t help it any more than Jared can. He goes where the work takes him; neither of them can afford to let him to do otherwise.  
  
“Yeah…” his dad trails off with a heavy sigh as Jared washes his food down with a swig of Pepsi. “So how’re you doing with rent and all? I haven’t checked in for a few weeks; you need any money?”  
  
Jared smirks and pokes at the lone tomato on his dirty burger wrapper. “No.”  
  
His dad raises a dubious eyebrow; somehow, that expression always makes Jared think that he needs to brush his teeth. “You sure?”  
  
His lips quirk fondly. “M’fine, Dad. Honest.”  
  
“Ah ha.” His dad still didn’t sound convinced, so Jared decides it might be best to divert from the subject. He looks around pointedly at the boxed-in walls of the kitchenette/dining room/living area they’re sitting in the middle of.  
  
“You know I could give this place a good coat of paint sometime, if you want.” The walls are the shade of sickening beige usually reserved for hospital waiting rooms and the carpet is still the shabby grey one that had been down when he’d moved in. All that was in the fridge when they’d come in were two cans of beer and a half-empty carton of milk that necessitated the bleach that’s now stinking up the room. “Make it look more inviting than a cell in Alcatraz.”  
  
His dad smirks and kicks his legs up onto the stool beside Jared’s thigh. “Nah, no sense in wasting your supplies. I ain’t here enough.”  
  
Jared wonders if he still has the photo of Jared in his Charlton uniform stuck to the wall. His old potato prints and Father’s Day cards stashed under his mattress. Knowing his dad, he probably does; one of Jared’s fifth grade art projects is still stuck to the freshly sterilized fridge with a magnet he painted at the Texas Art Fair twelve years ago.  
  
His dad’s foot nudging his thigh distracts the memories trying to nudge his foggy brain cells.  
  
“So how’s the wedding going?”  
  
Jared smiles. “Oh, it’s going. It’s official: Danneel Harris is good and ready to become a bone-fide ball and chain.”  
  
His dad chortles. “God help him.”  
  
“God help us all,” Jared amends, nursing his can of Pepsi. He had been offered one of the fridge beers, but he’d declined, sticking to soda even though he’s a year legal. It still feels weird to be drinking with the guy who’d berated him for doing so for seventeen years.  
  
He peers distractedly into the can in his hands until the silence gets the best of him and he looks up to find his dad staring at him again. It’s different from the last one, though; less “father knows best” and more “I remember when you were in diapers.”  
  
“I’m proud of you, you know,” his dad says suddenly, low and gruff, his gaze never wavering.  
  
Jared shutters his eyes a little, feeling a pink flush make its way up his neck. Not because he doesn’t know it, not because his dad never tells him so—he does, all the time—but because that’s what happens when people compliment him like that out of the blue. Jensen calls it his “little boy blue blush.” It doesn’t look like he’s ever going to grow out of it.  
  
“I know,” is all he says, because Jared never doubts it, but he knows that his dad does. All the time.  
  
“And your mother would be too.” Jared eyes fly open to his father leaning forward to snag the invite off the counter, holding it up and staring at it with a sad little smile tugging at his lips. “She’d be so friggin’ proud of you.”  
  
Jared holds his breath; holds onto the sincerity in his dad’s voice—he might be steadfastly certain of his dad’s unwavering pride in him, but hers was something that he always wondered about.  
  
“It kills me that she’s not here to see you,” he says, sighing, his eyes darting briefly from the printout to Jared. “This was her thing, this art stuff. I mean, I love you, kid, more than anything—hell, I’d paint pottery with you till the sky falls down, but I never really _got it_ , ya know?”  
  
And yeah, Jared knows. It’s never been a big deal, but yeah, he knows. Gerry Padalecki was never gonna vacation at the Louvre. Jared Padalecki got seasick staring into a tea cup. It was something they had to live with.  
  
“I wish I could have done better by you.”  
  
“Dad…”  
  
“No, really.” He pushes the paper away and sits forward to study Jared carefully, seriously. “I mean, this fatherhood thing doesn’t come with a manual at the best of times. In a perfect world, I would never have been away as much as I was. Your mom would still be here. I would have had money to spare for your college tuition…”  
  
“Perfect’s overrated,” Jared cuts him off with a quirk of his lips as his dad’s eyes narrow. Life isn’t perfect. It is what it is, and they’ve got an all right deal, with everything said and done. A lot of people have it a lot worse. The Padaleckis are many things, but they’ve never been greedy.  
  
“I was never worried, though,” his dad finishes, and there’s that “father knows best” look in his eyes.  
  
Jared quirks a dubious eyebrow. “Oh no?” he deadpans, and his dad laughs, scratches his neck absently.  
  
“Nah.” He waves a hand dismissively and grins wide. “You found your way better than I ever did. Hell, it’s not every kid from Leighton who stumbles and falls into the McCoy estate without gettin’ a restraining order.”  
  
Jared’s lips quirk and his dad finishes chortling.  
  
“So you staying there til after your show?”  
  
Jared nods. “Yeah, probably.”  
  
His dad smiles. “Old times, huh?”  
  
“I guess.” Jared shifts on his stool, feels his dad’s stare on the top of his head.  
  
“Sandy’s sick,” he says suddenly, breaking the easy silence. His dad doesn’t say anything and Jared stares at his cuticles. “She’s got this heart thing. They don’t know if they can help her.”  
  
He finally looks up and catches his father’s gaze, blank and unwavering, through his bangs. After a second, his dad clears his throat. “What kind of heart thing?”  
  
“The kind that kills you.”  
  
His dad’s lips tighten into a thin line and suddenly, Jared’s eleven years old. Sitting on the sofa in their old house with his father lingering uselessly by the kitchen and his mother looking at him with huge, watery eyes.  
  
 _I’m sick, kiddo._  
  
“They didn’t tell me,” Jared says, for lack of anything else to do; he’s on a roll, it seems. Maybe it’s because he hasn’t really talked to anyone about it yet. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t get much chance for a heart to heart with his old man nowadays, or because logically, he knows he won’t stick around to see the end game. Maybe it’s just because, if anyone was going to be able to share in his head space about this, it’s going to be his dad.  
  
“Why not?”  
  
Jared shrugs, his eyes back on his rapidly diminishing cuticles, his words low and mumbled. “Because they weren’t sure if I was sticking around. Because they didn’t want me to feel guilty about it.” He looks up, his dad’s eyes imploring. “Because they thought it would remind me of Mom.”  
  
“And does it?”  
  
Jared shrugs, his voice coming out as barely a whisper. “I don’t need a reminder to think of her,” he says. He knows his dad doesn’t, either.  
  
“I know you don’t,” his dad says after a second, and then hands are batting at his fingers, stopping the nitpicking and prompting him to look back up. “I also know that I don’t need to tell you that sometimes, bad shit happens. To perfectly good people, for no rhyme or reason. And all we can do is hold tight and wait for it to make some kinda sense again.”  
  
Jared holds his gaze until his eyes are dry and he’s itching to move. He sniffs, nods slowly, and starts gathering the dirty wrappers and junk food boxes into a pile between them.  
  
He’s hauling the papers into his arms when his dad’s voice sounds again. “So you seen Ackles yet?”  
  
Jared falters in his step towards the trash. “Yup,” he says, turning to eye his father suspiciously when all he gets in reply is a knowing hum.  
  
“What? What’s with the look?”  
  
His dad immediately thrusts his hands out, palms up, a look of pure innocence on his face. “What. What look? I have eyes, they stare sometimes!”  
  
Jared narrows his own eyes and dumps the rubbish into the trashcan, turning to snickering father. “You know, dads aren’t really supposed to encourage homoeroticism in their sons.”  
  
His father waves nonchalantly and rolls his eyes at Jared’s pissy stance.  
  
“Well, like I said, I ain’t done this fathering thing by the book.”  
  


:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

  
  
  
On top of everything else, they’ve still got a wedding to attend. Jared thinks it’s fucking ridiculous.  
  
In some fucked up version of sentiment, they’re having the ceremony at the beach just outside the house, which means that come the morning of the actual wedding, Jared’s personal space has become taffeta central.  
  
Jared’s fumbling with a Windsor knot in his bedroom mirror when someone whistles behind him and he turns to see Sandy standing in his open doorway in all her bridesmaid glory. Her hair is loose and wavy around her shoulders and the pale pink of her dress makes her skin shine flawlessly.  
  
“You look pretty,” Jared says dully, turning back to the mirror. Sandy chuckles under her breath as she sashays over towards him.  
  
“You always did know how to sweet talk a lady, Padalecki,” she teases, propping herself on the dresser beside Jared’s mirror and watching him try to finish getting dressed.  
  
He’s running late, probably due to the fact that he tossed and turned and kicked until five and then was prodded awake by Chad and Misha at six thirty with little regard to proper morning etiquette as five napkins’ worth of an order of bagels and frappuccinos was thrown at his face. By the time he’d come back, gone to pick up the bouquets from Addie’s, and taken a shift fanning a hysterical Danni with one of the ceremony programmes, he’d barely had time to jump into the shower before the guests started to arrive.  
  
“Can you believe it?” Sandy says, her fingers dancing slowly along the side of the sturdy pine dresser. “One of us, married.”  
  
There’s a dreamy quality to her voice and suddenly Jared’s fifteen again, cold and reluctantly sitting on the wall outside his mother’s church.  
  
“I always thought it would be you.”  
  
Sandy doesn’t reply to Jared’s confession, spending another twenty seconds watching him unwaveringly in his continued attempts at tying a tie before he gives up altogether, his fingers dropping away as he turns to stare pointedly at Sandy.  
  
“So what? I’m just supposed to go around pretending nothing’s wrong?”  
  
“No,” Sandy replies slowly, the same way he imagines she explains word problems to her kids. “Everyone knows now. No one has to pretend anything anymore.”  
  
He blinks at her black sense of humor and then shakes his head, turning back to the mirror and feeling his throat close up. He can’t be blasé about this. Not yet. He doesn’t know how everyone’s walking around like everything’s the same while he’s here, getting ready to marry one of his best friends off while another one has this time bomb ticking away inside of her.  
  
“Hey,” Sandy says, stepping up to him and reaching out to tilt his face up to hers with a warning in her eyes. “No crying. Danni has strictly forbidden any tears that aren’t spilt over the beauty of her dress today!”  
  
Jared sniffs, willing the hotness out of his eyes, and wonders when the hell he became such a fucking princess. He nods resolutely and turns back to the mirror, trying to summon up another gram of patience before tackling the knot.  
  
“Here, let me before you hurt yourself,” Sandy says before he can get another grip on it. She steps up and reaches for the offending material.  
  
Jared dips his chin to watch her twist and work the tie into a knot and inhales fruit and coconut as his stomach flutters the way it always does, every time since he was thirteen years old. He suddenly can’t imagine her hair ever smelling of anything else; certainly nothing cold or dead.  
  
Sandy’s always had such great hair.  
  
“Thank you,” Jared says softly as Sandy flattens the tie down and pats his chest approvingly.  
  
“No problem.” She looks back over her shoulder on her way out the door and Jared sees the twinkle of mischief in her eye. “It’s not every day I get to help a total hottie dress himself.”  
  
Jared laughs, helplessly.  
  
:::::  
  
The ceremony goes off without a hitch. Jared’s not surprised; someone would’ve need way bigger balls than his to fuck it up on Danni’s watch. Jared stands with Chad and Jensen at the alter and watches Sandy lead Danni down the aisle to where Tom is sweating rivers and rocking on the balls of his feet like a Weeble.  
  
Addie bawls in the front row and Jensen keeps sneaking Jared amused little glances from under his lashes when Tom flubs his lines out of nervousness.  
  
Afterwards, when the birdseed has been thrown, the photos tolerated, and the three course dinner is only just starting to digest, Sandy stands up and taps the side of her glass. The soft chime rings out across the patio like a whip crack and the din tapers off to silence.  
  
“Hi, sorry to interrupt,” she says, beaming winningly as everyone shifts and shuffles and turns towards her table.  
  
Jared’s seen her make a hundred speeches. Student body council presidents are renowned for their public speaking abilities and Sandy McCoy was one hell of student body council president. Danni’s crying into a napkin before she gets though her first sentence and Addie nudges Jared’s arm to draw his attention away for a second; he follows her pointed gaze to where Chad is looking resolutely at the ceiling, blinking rapidly and muttering under his breath.  
  
Sophia shrugs at him helplessly and Jared hides a smile behind the brim of his water glass.  
  
“To friends and family,” Sandy finishes, raising her glass, and it could just be Jared’s drama queen coming out to play again, but he swears she’s looking directly at him. “Our lives are full of change, and seasons come and go…but some things are forever.” Jared hears her loud and clear.  
  
Kane starts up with something low and smooth as Danni and Tom open up the dance floor and Jared lingers at the bar, watching Addie and Josh foxtrot expertly and Chad spin a giggling Sophia around in a circle.  
  
“I always thought it would be you, you know,” Sandy says, sliding up beside Jared. Her hair’s slightly mussed out of its coif and she’s cradling a glass of champagne to her chest. She looks flushed and loose and…sated. Probably more than Jared’s ever seen her.  
  
Jared frowns. “Huh?”  
  
She redirects his gaze to Jensen, sitting at one of the tables on the edge of the dance floor and staring down into his drink.  
  
“This morning, when you said you always thought it would be me getting married first. We all thought it would be you.” She sighs, looking up to meet his eyes briefly. “You and Jensen; you were it, you know?” She shrugs a delicate shoulder. “There was never a question. You just were. Jared and Jensen. You were gonna be together forever.” Her eyes skip over the dance floor without really seeing and her fingernail taps a staccato rhythm against the side of her glass, a telltale sign that the cogs are turning in her brain. “That’s why we did what we did, Jared. It wasn’t because we were lying, or we wanted to hurt you or make you feel stupid. It was because we were scared.”  
  
Jared swallows the rest of his wine in one long gulp before he looks at her. “You were scared?”  
  
She meets his gaze and her eyes are blank for the first time. “He fucked up. And we found out and we…we didn’t want you to throw away what you had because of a mistake, Jared.”  
  
“He fucked someone else, Sandy. That isn’t a _mistake_.”  
  
“He did it because he loved you. He loves you,” she retorts knowingly, and Jared’s stomach twitches as he looks away. “I think he’s always loved you.”  
  
“Love doesn’t fix everything, Sandy.”  
  
“Maybe not.” She downs the rest of her wine and slides the flute onto the bar beside Jared’s elbow. “But it’s the best thing we mere mortals have to make us want to try.”  
  
Jared smiles wryly. “How can you stand here and play Doctor Phil after everything you’ve told me in the last two days?”  
  
Sandy just smiles softly and leans into his side, pushing him a little. There’s nothing playful about her voice, though, and Jared believes every single word.  
  
“I believe in fate,” she says softly. “I do. I _still_ do. There’s an order to things, even if we’ll never understand it.”  
  
“Then what’s the point?” Jared shoots back, trying his best not to sound defensive and cruel because it isn’t Sandy’s fault she’s a helpless optimist. Just like it isn’t Jared’s fault that he’s filled with so much useless, unadulterated hatred at life for even trying to knock that out of her. “If we never get to know, what’s the fucking point in any of it?”  
  
“It’s called faith,” Sandy says, the tiniest hint of a smile shining in her eyes, begging him to take some for himself even though Jared’s never had much stock in faith. His mother had it in abundance; Jensen had it thrust at him his whole life. Sandy seems to have been born with it: innate and completely unshakable.  
  
She pulls back to look over his doubtful face. “It’s alright,” she says finally, even though Jared hasn’t actually sad a word. “I have enough for you poor saps who can’t find your own nose in a snow storm.” She nudges Jared in the side, a little more pointedly this time, and tilts her head towards Jensen’s table.  
  
“Go,” she says. “The least you can do is let a girl live vicariously.” She grins as she turns back to the bar to order another drink. “You might even salvage something worth fixing, Jared Padalecki.”  
  
Jensen looks up from his drink as Jared shadows his table, the corners of his lips rising dubiously at Jared’s somewhat shaky smile. “I think Addie’s leading,” he jokes, looking back out over the dance floor, but Jared’s gaze doesn’t waver. Instead, he takes a breath and holds out his palm.  
  
He might as well have his bloody heart attached to his cuff link.  
  
“Do you wanna?” he asks, cocking his head towards the floor; Jensen looks up at him, startled, then down at his hand and back again. Jared holds his breath.  
  
Jensen grins suddenly, brilliantly, and Jared’s chest expands and knocks his breath away for a second.  
  
“Yeah. Okay.” He slips his hand into Jared’s and slides out of the seat and Jared can feel Sandy’s eyes on the back of his head as he walks them over to the crowd. Sees Chad and Sophia and Chris and Josh and Addie all staring at them as they press their chests together in the middle of the dance floor and sway to whatever Chris is crooning into the mic.  
  
“I feel like those monkeys at the zoo,” Jensen mutters into his ear, and Jared grins into Jensen’s neck.  
  
“Aw, baby, you’re a lion, for sure.”  
  
Jared doesn’t believe in fate. He doesn’t believe in God or heaven. He’s never really put much stock in faith, or anything like it. But he believes in his friends. He believes in his family. He always, always has. And if Sandy McCoy says he deserves a happily ever after, then who the hell is Jared to argue?  
  
Jensen’s rumbling laugh vibrates all the way down to his fancy shoes and Jared thinks that this is maybe the closest to heaven that his penny faith is ever gonna get him.  
  
Then Sandy goes and collapses. And everything goes to hell again.  
  


:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

  
  
  
There are few things that put fear into Jared’s heart more than hospitals.  
  
This could be put down to a number of things. The cold, unfeeling walls, for one (that must be written into some health care clause somewhere, because why anyone would choose that particular colour for any kind of bulk painting, Jared has no clue); the uncomfortable plastic chairs; the overcrowding; the persistent anticipation; the coughs and sneezes and airborne diseases just waiting to creep up on Jared’s lowly immune system and fuck him over; the exertion of parking that almost makes Jared’s eyes bleed.  
  
In short, Jared _hates_ hospitals. So it’s typical that he’s spent the last hour and a half sitting ramrod straight on one of the chairs he hates so much, jammed as close to the corner of the room as he can get. His old friend irony’s really starting to piss him off.  
  
People are scattered all around him, pacing, twitching, largely silent. They’ve received more than a few stares already, their tuxes and formal gowns marginally overdressed for even the nicest emergency room. Now that Danni’s folded into one of the chairs in her wedding dress, the whole scene is actually pretty comical…to anyone else.  
“This is ridiculous!” Danni’s the first to break; clearly married life is doing nothing for her zen as she spits out a cuticle and glares at the nurses’ station. “We’ve been here for an hour and no one’s even saying anything!”  
  
It’s actually been an hour and thirty six minutes, but Jared thinks that specifics aren’t really necessary at this point. He’s also refrained from pointing out that they have heard something; namely Mr McCoy breezing past them and telling them all to sit still and hold tight until he finds out what’s happening.  
  
Fifty-nine minutes later, they still haven’t heard anything. Danni’s far from the only one getting antsy about it.  
  
“It’s been an hour. That’s a long time, right?” Chad is scanning his friends’ faces inquisitively, ducking and twisting his head to try and catch the eyes that are busy tracking doctors and clipboards and clock hands. “Isn’t it? Is it a long time to wait in hospital? Is it bad?”  
  
Jared has a feeling the question is directed at him. He is, after all, the in-house expert on these things.  
  
Jared imagines that he spent more time sitting in hospital waiting rooms the year he turned eleven than Chad has his entire life. Once upon a time, Jared knew the name of every nurse who worked on the third floor. He’d read every letter of every magazine in the hotel gift shop, tried every flavor of muffin the cafeteria had to offer.  
  
Once upon a time, Jared had spent every Saturday for seven months sitting on a chair just like this one. Waiting for one of those side rooms to spit out someone who looked like his mother. Now, with all of his grown-up logic, Jared can understand that that’s just what chemo does to people. Back then, he had blamed the hospital for sucking the life out of her.  
  
Jared is busy swallowing down bile in order to give Chad some kind of assurance when Jensen stops pacing and frowns at Chad.  
  
“Everyone waits in a hospital,” he says and then continues pacing, his thumbnail caught back between his teeth.  
  
He hasn’t sat down since they walked through the doors. If Addie had been there, she would have pushed him into a chair and held his fingernails away from his mouth with a stern hand. If Josh had been there, he would have told him that he was getting on everyone’s fucking nerves and thwacked him upside the head. If Chris had been there, he would have offered to go find a male nurse to blow him in the supply closet.  
  
As it is, none of them are there at all. Only Jared. And he’s having a pretty hard time keeping himself together, let alone holding Jensen up, too.  
  
Sophia and Chad have shuffled off to get coffee when Mr McCoy emerges from one of the corridors, a doctor trailing behind him. His eyes are red, swollen and hideous and so completely foreign on Gary McCoy’s stern, composed face that Jared’s brain can’t quite make sense of the visual cues at first. Jensen catches sight of Jared’s wide-eyed stare and everyone whips their heads round to watch Mr McCoy stop by the nurses’ station and nod solemnly at whatever the doctor is telling him. It’s only when the doctor reaches out and squeezes Mr McCoy’s shoulder that Jared’s struck by a memory, clear as bell.  
  
 _“I’m sorry, Mr Padalecki. There’s nothing more we could have done.”_  
  
He squeezes his eyes shut against the image, as tight as possible, tiny white dots dancing across his the backs of his lids and he can’t hear anything but a pleasant buzz of white noise blanketing everything. The smell of bleach, his daddy’s sobs—the condescending pats of condolence on his tiny eleven-year-old shoulder.  
  
“Hey.” Jared blinks his eyes open and stares into green ones, steady and wide and familiar. He doesn’t know how much time has passed, but his eyes are stinging and his knuckles are white against the armrest and he can feel Danni’s and Jensen’s hands on his neck, firm thumbs stroking insistently along the sides of his face. Jared gulps in a breath. “It’s alright. She’s okay.”  
  
Jared nods shakily. Feels sensation start to return to his limbs, his chest loosening slightly and the hysterical sobs of panic that had been locked inside clawing their way up his throat to spill out of his mouth in between breathy little hiccups.  
  
Jared’s fingers tighten around Jensen’s wrists as he leans their foreheads together, Jensen’s even breath against his cheek steadying him again.  
  
“She’s alright.”  
  
He doesn’t sound overly certain to Jared’s ears, but his hands are steady and his voice is strong and he’s stopped pacing a rut in the floor so Jared chalks it up as a win.  
  
It’s ironic. He’d completely forgotten that the quickest way to ground Jensen is for Jared to freak out.  
  
::::::::::::::  
  
Sandy stays in the hospital for a week.  
  
They take it in shifts, rotating in and out of the cramped waiting room two or three at a time every few hours, even though the McCoys don’t let any of them in to actually see her for the first three days. She has a fever, apparently, and the tests have made her weak and a little dazed and everyone in a white coat is jittery about infections and outdoor germs and other things that Jared zones out on with very little effort.  
  
He takes his pencils with him when it’s his turn. Sits cross-legged as best he can in the shiny blue chairs and sketches the people passing him by. This was his pastime back then, too. The first portrait he’d ever done was in one of these chairs: a little girl, years younger than him, slouched in the chair opposite. Waiting on someone Jared suspected wasn’t coming back anytime soon. Someone who was probably in a room next to his mother, wherever that was.  
  
He’d sketched her on the back of a used napkin and pressed it into her hands once his mom appeared and pushed at him with weak hands towards the automatic doors. She’d looked at it, startled, didn’t have time to say anything before Jared was back out in the sunshine, the warm summer breeze washing off the stale hospital dust that had settled on his skin. She’d show it to whoever she was waiting for and they’d smile, he knew. It was the best thing that could ever come out of an afternoon in a hospital ward.  
  
He’s busy shading an old woman’s face when something knocks his knee out from under him and he looks up with a scowl to see Chad towering over him with two cups of vending machine coffee clutched in his hands.  
  
“Time to punch out, Michelangelo,” he says, thrusting one of the cups at him and dropping into the chair beside him. He strains to look over Jared’s elbow at the paper and slides his gaze to its subject, a wheelchair-bound woman with a look of intense concentration on her face as she knits and purls her way through the ball of yarn on her blanketed knees. She’s been at it for over an hour now. Jared suspects a sweater of some kind.  
  
“Dude, stop perving on old ladies,” Chad mumbles into his Styrofoam as he takes a gulp and winces at the taste.  
  
Jared rolls his eyes and lays the pencil to one side, pulling his legs out from under him and stretching out the pins and needles running up his thigh.  
  
“I thought Danni was taking this round?” He yawns as the pad joins the pencil and he drops his head back against the wall tiredly.  
  
Chad raises his shoulders. “There was a costume emergency at the Playhouse.”  
  
Jared’s lips twitch. “The show must go on, huh?”  
  
Chad nods agreeably. “That’s what I hear. Plus, Sandy would put us in the bed beside her if she thought we let the fucking summer play go to ruin on her watch.”  
  
Jared agrees profusely and reaches up to rub some of the grit out of his eyes, turning to find Chad frowning into the Styrofoam cup like it’s going to change the coffee’s taste.  
  
“How’re you doing, dude?”  
  
Chad pauses in his staring, cutting his pointed glare sideways to meet Jared’s eyes.  
  
“You coming on to me, man?”  
  
“Fuck off, Chad. I’m being fucking concerned.”  
  
His two week summer trip to his hometown has kind of spiraled downward, Jared realized recently. What was going to be a couple of weekends with his best friend at their old haunt has pretty much turned into… Well, he isn’t quite sure what.  
  
But he does know that he’s kind of lost touch with said best friend over the past couple of weeks, even though he knows that the last thing Chad Michael Murray craves is a concerned citizen nosing into his emotions.  
  
“I’m alright,” Chad relents finally, leaning his head back to mirror Jared’s. His voice is kind of gravelly, though, and Jared knows that they’re thinking the same thing: _As good as we can get._  
  
“Chad,” Jared says after they’ve sat in silence for a few seconds and wheelchair Gran has moved onto the second sleeve. Chad hums and doesn’t move. “Why did you come home this summer?”  
  
“I followed your gigantic ass to Chicago, didn’t I?” he replies without pause. “Seems right I follow it back here.”  
  
Jared’s lips twitch. He can remember the swelling of pure relief when he’d turned up at the train station that day and seen Chad waiting by the turnstiles with a backpack of his own and a knowing smirk on his face.  
  
 _Someone’s gotta make sure you don’t hurt yourself, you fucking buffoon._  
  
The smile lingers on Jared face at the flashback. “Chad?” he ventures again. Another hum. “Do you think I did the right thing coming back?”  
  
He’s silent for another beat and Jared’s about to check that his friend hasn’t fallen asleep when his low voice breaks the silence.  
  
“Maybe it wasn’t ever about right or wrong, you ever think of that?” he says, and Jared’s about to make some lame joke about Confucius and the Dali Lama when he speaks again. “I mean, Jen—he thought what he did was right, in the grand scheme of things. He went about the wrong fucking way, but he had his reasons.”  
  
Jared smirks bitterly. “The reasons you don’t know anything about?” he ventures sarcastically.  
  
“It’s not like I _approved_! But I understood, kinda. Sorta.”  
  
Jared raises an eyebrow at Chad in silent challenge.  
  
“Don’t give me the fucking stink eye.” Chad sighs without even looking at him. “I’m on your side, you know I am. I’m with you, dude; lying is _bad_. Never a good idea. Cheating—way worse.” Jared slams his head back against the wall, sensing another fucking fortune cookie moment fast approaching. “I’m just saying that maybe some things outweigh all the bad stuff, sometimes.”  
  
“Like covering your own back?”  
  
Jared winces at the bitterness twisting his words. Chad’s eyes are piercing when he blinks them open.  
  
“Like doing what you think is right.”  
  
Ah, full circle. Jared was wondering when that was going to happen.  
  
“Would you forgive Sophia?” Jared asks when Chad doesn’t look away. “If she cheated on you—broke your heart, made you look like a fucking fool. Could you just forget about it? Shrug it off. Because it was the _right thing to do_?”  
  
“Sure I could,” Chad replies easily, his eyes slipping shut again. “As soon as I cut off his dick and fed it to him. Sure.”  
  
Jared blinks blankly a few times before cracking up.  
  
“I’m going home,” Jared says, pushing himself up and brushing uselessly at the creases in his jeans. “I’m tired. And achy.”  
  
Chad’s knowing smirk is back in place as he cracks one eye open. “And you want me to do something about it, is that it?”  
  
His pencil smacks Chad in the ear as Jared leaves.  
  
“Fuck off, Chad.”  
  


::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

  
  
  
By the time Sandy’s let loose, Danni’s been a ball and chain for eight days, Addie has gone back on her word to a remarkable degree and organized a bunch of tasteful bouquets to decorate her bedside, and Jared has eight varnished canvases lined up along the back deck.  
  
The Playhouse production is less than a week away.  
  
Jared’s just so fucking happy to see his friend free of wires and tape and sterile white sheets that he’s giddy to let her talk him into helping them rush the last of the scenery.  
  
He’s busy layering leaves onto a cardboard branch when a shadow falls obscures his lighting and throws off the colouring. He looks up to find Jensen towering over him.  
  
“How’s it going?”  
  
Jared smirks and gestures to the cutout in front of him with his brush. “I can work until my hand falls off, and it’s still going to look like painted cardboard.”  
  
Jensen angles his head critically to regard the half-finished tree, then shrugs dismissively. “Trees were never your strong point.”  
  
Jared frowns as Jensen drops down beside him. “Have you been talking to Sandy?”  
  
Jensen laughs and looks to where the girl in question is poised center stage, a group of snappily dressed fifteen-years-olds crowded around her, listening for their cues.  
  
“She looks better.”  
  
Jared follows his gaze sadly, settling on the only bit of her he can glimpse between the crowd, and sighs. She’s still pretty weak from the the meds she’d been on in the hospital, her clothes baggy on her usually curvy figure due to the weight she’s lost. Her face is still pale, and sometimes it looks a little pinched. Her hands shake with just the tiniest of tremors when she gets too tired.  
  
She’s still Sandy.  
  
But she’ll never be better.  
  
The doctors assured them of that.  
  
“Yeah.” Jared sighs quietly, watching her throw her head back and laugh at something one of the kids leans in to tell her. “I guess… So is this how it’s going to be?” he asks gloomily, forcing himself to look back at the job at hand. “Just pretending nothing’s wrong at all until she collapses again?” She will, the doctors promised, with no guarantees of how quickly she’ll bounce back each time. Until the time she just…won’t.  
  
Just like that.  
  
Jared jabs angrily at the board as Jensen rolls his shoulders nonchalantly. “Not pretending,” he says, putting on his thespian voice and raising a hand grandly. “Living in the moment.”  
  
Jared levels him with a look. “You’re such a fucking drama dork.”  
  
Jensen laughs, kicks Jared in the thigh to make him squirm away.  
  
His tone is tapered down to something serious when he speaks again. “They’ve thrown everything they have at it, Jay. The McCoys, the doctors, they all have. Hell, we’ve all thrown money at it. Even got some bullshit specialist flown in from Beijing.” He shrugs helplessly. “It is what it is. It’s Sandy’s play at this point; we’re just supporting roles.”  
  
Jared watches a blob of paint run an ugly line down the trunk and swallows. Tries to keep the bitterness and anger and guilt from choking him at the truth of it all.  
  
“Speaking of plays.” He thinks it best to change the subject; breeze past, roll on. It’s Sandy’s script notes they’re supposed to be working off of, after all. “How goes it? Has Zach managed to drag himself out of the bathroom yet?”  
  
To his credit, young Zachary has shown marked improvement in the last couple of weeks. He seems to have transcended from quiet and unsure right into nauseous nerves.  
  
Five days until curtain. It’s what they’re all living for lately, it seems.  
  
“Ah, he’ll be fine.” Jensen chuckles, his gaze wandering past Jared’s shoulder offstage. “Once he gets through opening night, he’ll have it in the bag. Kid’s got talent; he’s just got the jitters, that’s all.”  
  
Jared smiles as he switches out brushes and starts in on the bark detail. “I happen to remember another young thespian with his face in the toilet on opening night.”  
  
Jensen smiles back. “Yeah,” he says softly, his eyes taking on a wistful sheen as they slide out of focus. “A long time ago.”  
  
“Not that long,” Jared amends, because in the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t, no matter how many lifetimes he feels like he’s lived. “You were going to be the next Oscar Wilde, if I remember that right.”  
  
Jensen rolls his eyes, his head thunking back against the wall. On stage, Sandy’s voice cuts through the noise, yelling scene numbers and calling for positions. “We were all going to be a lot of things.”  
  
They catch each other’s gazes then, and Jared holds it, finding everything that’s being said in that one look. Reading all the little truths that don’t need words.  
  
“We still can be,” Jared says, almost breathless with the smog of tension that’s suddenly settled over their tiny corner of the floor. “I mean—you can be. You still love it, I know you do. It’s right there on your face as soon as you walk into this place.”  
  
Jensen smiles wistfully and looks around fondly at their dusty confines.  
  
“Sandy thinks I should take over this place,” he says eventually, and Jared’s brow furrows.  
  
“Take over the Playhouse?”  
  
Jensen nods at Jared’s confused face. “They want to knock it down. Build a hotel and an apartment block.”  
  
The words hit Jared like a punch to the gut. Knock down the Playhouse? Jared can’t imagine Rhylee without it. It’s as much a part of the town as the sand or the fish markets.  
No wonder Sandy’s so insanely enthusiastic about this play.  
  
“She thinks I can buy it out,” Jensen’s lips curl up slightly, condescending, “open up an acting school or something.”  
  
“Then do it,” Jared says, because it doesn’t seem like an implausible plan. In fact, it seems like the most logical thing Jared’s heard since he got here.  
  
Jensen laughs disbelievingly; hollow, bitter sounds. “Oh, right; I bet my dad would just love that.”  
  
“Screw your dad.”  
  
The laughter dies pretty quickly.  
  
“I’m serious, Jen. Screw him. You’ve done plenty for your dad. More than you ever should’ve had to.” Jensen opens his mouth to interrupt but Jared forges on before he can get a word in. “You never should have taken the damn job in the first place; you never wanted it. It was never even the plan…”  
  
“Plans change, Jared,” Jensen snaps irritably, and Jared clamps his mouth shut for a minute.  
  
“Dreams don’t,” he says finally, and Jensen’s eyes soften slightly. “You love acting. You love the theatre, you love directing; it’s who you are.”  
  
“I have a responsibility. I have a business to support.”  
  
“Why should it be your job to support it?”  
  
Jared watches him twitch a little. “Because they supported me. I mean, I know he isn’t winning any father of the year awards any time soon, but he does want what‘s best for me—for all of us. And yeah, okay, maybe he goes about it in the wrong way sometimes, but the way I figure it, if he can accept that I won’t be passing on the Ackles name any time soon, then the least I can do is put the rest of my dreams on the back burner for a while.”  
  
The reasoning is so Jensen that Jared would laugh if it wasn’t so fucking tragic.  
  
“Speaking of big dreams,” Jensen continues once their sights have returned to the rehearsals going on offstage, “one week to go til your show.” He smiles wryly. “Think you’re going to make it?”  
  
For the first time in a long time, Jared thinks he just might.  
  
:::::  
  
  
It’s the first day of August and the sun’s letting everyone know it.  
  
Sandy appears while he’s packing up the canvases on the deck and listening to Sophia speak to him in short, clipped tones from the kitchen. She appears every twenty minutes or so to make sure that none of the pieces have been misplaced and/or destroyed by any freak weather conditions; her hair sticking up in wayward waves where she’s been tugging and twirling it manically in the way she does that Chad dubs “pre-show PMS.” Chad has been suspiciously absent for most of the morning.  
  
“So are you sticking around after Dallas, Mr Artist?” Sandy asks, to the point as ever, her perfectly shaped eyebrows quirking as she enunciates her words just to grate on his nerves. Her color has come back and she’s sporting a sun-kissed glow in her cheeks and a spring in her step thanks to raving reviews of the summer production.  
  
“Maybe,” Jared says absently without taking his eyes off the tape gun.  
  
Sandy hums and feigns obliviousness. “Not on my account, I hope.”  
  
“Of course on your account. Don’t be a dumbass.”  
  
Sandy laughs, because it appears they’ve come to some kind of undisclosed agreement that they’re done with half truths and pretend smiles.  
  
“You know what I wish,” she says dreamily, kicking her feet out and propping them on the rails in front of her. Jared pauses his taping to look at her, waiting with intense curiosity to find out what someone in her position might be wishing for. Time? Peace? Karma?  
  
“I wish that I’d called you up five years ago.”  
  
Jared’s gut tightens on a sharp exhale, his eyes prickling at her tone. She looks out on the horizon over the porch rails and he lets himself wish, for the first time in forever, that wishes could come true.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he says finally, clearing the lump out of throat and turning back to the box in his hands.  
  
He feels more than sees her glance down at him, hears the smirk in her voice. “For what?”  
  
He shrugs, running a finger over the sharp corner of the canvas. “I don’t know,” he admits quietly. In reality, he wouldn’t even know where to start. Sandy laughs.  
  
“Well in that case, I’m sorry too.”  
  
Jared looks up and meets her eyes, a watery smile creeping onto his face just as Jensen busts into the house with some new packing crates and yells out to pinpoint Jared’s location while dubiously side stepping a pacing Sophia.  
  
Sandy watches as Jared flicks his gaze back towards him unconsciously and then struggles to dampen the smile his arrival brings about.  
  
“Maybe not just on my account then,” she murmurs, and Jared narrows his eyes playfully at her. They’re done with half truths, but silence speaks louder than it ever has before.  
  
It’s something Jared doubts will change.  
  
Jensen appears in the doorway, slightly ruffled, dropping the crates on the deck. He looks up, catches Jared’s eyes, and grins.  
  
“You ready?”  
  
Jared grins back.  
  
He just might be.  


  


  
**::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::**   


**  
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**  
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**  
**

“Seriously? _Again_?” Chad whines pitifully. “What do you want from me, Padalecki?”  
  
Jared adjusts the lens on the camera to focus, biting his lower lip in concentration.  
  
“I want you to shut up and look startlingly photogenic,” Jared says as Chad continues to whine.  
  
Danni flicks her hair over one shoulder, angling her body in towards Tom and grinning, “My favorite pastime.”  
  
Jared smirks, sets the timer, and scuttles over to where Sandy, Chad, Sophia, Danni, Tom, and Jensen are gathered on the deck, all crowded in tight.  
  
“I need a shot,” Jared confides, sliding in between Chad and Jensen and counting down to the flash.  
  
Jensen’s hand settles in the small of his back and hot pinpricks dance all the way up his spine.  
  
“Another five minutes of this and we’ll all need a shot,” Sandy scoffs. She’s front and centre on the swing, bookended by Sophia and Tom.  
  
“An _artistic_ shot,” Jared amends pointedly. “To commemorate the moment.”  
  
“What moment’s that?” Jensen ventures, trying to hold his smile and talk at the same time. “The moment your friends lose their last nerve and brain you with your own tripod?”  
  
The moment that could very well mark the beginning of the rest of his life, actually. Not that Jared is going to say it out loud.  
  
Nineteen hours until the show that two months ago, he never thought he’d make. It’s funny how things can change in the blink of an eye.  
  
He’s not sure what the outcome is going to be, or where he’s going after. All he knows is that he has one piece left. One final canvas that needs to be filled with something poignant and personal that’s going to be the focal piece.  
  
“Something that sums up Jared Padalecki,” Marianne had told him over the phone.  
  
He’s been setting up and rearranging for half an hour and people are starting to get hot and restless. He hasn’t played with photography before, but he doesn’t think anything else can do it justice. Nothing else can capture the black and white truth of exactly who Jared Padalecki has to thank for everything he is.  
  
Everything he could ever be.  
  
“Genius takes time, you know,” he tells them loftily. “It’s a…”  
  
“ _Process._ We know!” everyone on the porch choruses, bursting out laughing.  
  
It’s not until Jared’s got it enhanced and varnished and packed into a crate to be sent off for the spotlight pedestal of his exhibition that he realizes that maybe Sandy had the right idea all along.  
  
Children bury parents, parents bury children; love’s lost and sometimes found again. But at the end of the day, the world keeps turning. Someone, somewhere, will always be laughing, crying, questioning.  
  
Maybe sometimes you have to lose your blood to find your family. Maybe sometimes, you have to lose your way to realize exactly where you belong.  
  
Maybe, sometimes, if you’re lucky— _really_ lucky —you might even find some pretty amazing people along the way to hang right there with you through all of it.  
  
Maybe this is what it’s all about.  
  
Maybe this is was it means to have an order to things.  
  
The flash goes off as Sandy’s laughing, Danni’s smacking at Tom’s wandering hands, Sophia’s hair is flying wayward in the wind, and Jensen’s nose is pressed against Jared’s ear.  
  
There’s no order at all. _Perfect Chaos,_ his mother would have titled it.  
  
Jared thinks it’s his best work to date.  **  
**

  


  


  


  


  


**Author's Note:**

> THE ART: I lucked out with my artist. It's pretty much that simple. paracaerouvoar, was so on top of this fic it was ridiculous. Apart from going completely above and beyond the call of duty with two banners, a fanmix and a gorgeous divider, she managed to capture the essence of everything the fic was about in every piece. 
> 
> THE BETA: I find it pretty redundant singing asher_k's praises here, as I'm pretty certain everyone is already well aware of how amazing the girl is. But, of course, I'm doing it anyway coz yeah, she's just that good. As usual, she completely saved my life on this one. Not only was she her usual speedy and diligent self, but she completely held my hand through all of my Big Bang Virgin jitters. All that, of course, while being inhumanly patient through all of my technical issues, grammatical retardedness and my habit of picking up and leaving the country at a seconds notice. Basically, I should be paying her cash money for her services. But being broke she'll have to settle for big kisses and endless gratitude. And maybe my first born. 
> 
> THE DETAILS: Truthfully, in real life, I'm not a doctor. That is the only excuse I can give you for the startling horrific medical jargon and/or situations in this piece of writing. Myocarditis is a real life medical condition that I may or may not have embellished for the purpose of this story. If i have offended anyone by doing so - I'm very sorry. Similarly, any Texans out there that are truly startled and horrified by my invention and adaptation of an East Texas coastal town - I send you my deepest apologies. I'm a lowly British girl who merged One Tree Hill with Friday Night Lights and hoped for the best. Go Cowboys.


End file.
